Knowledges Born in the Struggle: Constructing the Epistemologies of the Global South 9780367362119, 9780367362072, 9780429344596

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“In this exciting collection, the epistemological—rather than the geographical— South emerges in its full political vitality.  […] The  authors illustrate the immense cognitive diversity generated through resistance against exclusion, degradation, and nullification—offering models of how we can weave together counter-hegemonic processes of existential and epistemological restitution. They thereby enact the idea of the Global South as both a reality and a ‘proposalin-progress’. This is an invitation to join the necessarily collective, positive, and constructive endeavor of interpreting a diverse and non-relativistic, incomplete, and pluriversal world through fighting to transform it. Don’t pass it up!” Jane Anna Gordon, author of Creolizing Political Theory and Statelessness and Contemporary Enslavement “This  sparkling collection offers a compelling instance of decolonization as ongoing emancipatory practice. Its authors urge us to reboot the modern political imagination by learning with, and from, the South: the South less as geographical than as epistemic space. And as the source of alternative theorizations born of struggle, resistant re-cognition, subaltern cosmopolitanism. The South, in this sense, is both a reality and a ‘proposal-in-progress’, speaking to emergent political possibilities, plural histories, and hopeful futures.” Jean and John Comaroff, Harvard University

KNOWLEDGES BORN IN THE STRUGGLE

In  a world overwhelmingly unjust and seemingly deprived of alternatives, this book claims that the alternatives can be found among us. These alternatives are, however, discredited or made invisible by the dominant ways of knowing. Rather than alternatives, therefore, we need an alternative way of thinking of alternatives. Such an alternative way of thinking lies in the knowledges born in the struggles against capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy, the three main forms of modern domination. In  their immense diversity, such ways of knowing constitute the Global South as an epistemic subject. The epistemologies of the South are guided by the idea that another world is possible and urgently needed; they emerge both in the geographical north and in the geographical south whenever collectives of people fight against modern domination. Learning from and with the epistemic South suggests that the alternative to a general theory is the promotion of an ecology of knowledges based on intercultural and interpolitical translation. Boaventura de Sousa Santos is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Coimbra (Portugal) and Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (USA). He  has written extensively on globalization, sociology of law and the state, epistemology, and social movements. His most recent publication is The  End of the Cognitive Empire: The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South (2018). Maria Paula Meneses, a Mozambican scholar, is currently principal researcher at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra. At  the heart of her research interests are the relations between knowledges, power, and societies. Her most recent book is Mozambique on the Move: Challenges and Reflections (with Sheila Khan and Bjorn Bertelsen 2018).

EPISTEMOLOGIES OF THE SOUTH

The Global North has faced growing difficulty in making sense of the broad changes sweeping the world, from the financialization and neoliberalization of the world economy to the growth of inequality on an unknown scale in its persistence, extension, and diversification of segregation, discrimination, and violence. Uneasiness has been growing within the social sciences at the feeling of inadequacy and even irrelevance of current work and established theory in its attempt to get to grips with such a world. The  main idea underlying this series is that the experience of the world is much broader than the Eurocentric understanding, and what is known as the Global South has been for centuries—and remains in contemporary times—an inexhaustible source of experiences, knowledges, political and social innovations, and celebrations of difference. Challenging the canonical and Eurocentric epistemological tradition, including the social sciences and humanities themselves, this series innovates through the encounter and dialogue with other epistemologies that have historically emerged in the South. Series Editor: Boaventura de Sousa Santos, University of Coimbra (Portugal) Epistemologies of the South Justice Against Epistemicide Boaventura de Sousa Santos Knowledges Born in the Struggle Constructing the Epistemologies of the Global South Edited by Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Maria Paula Meneses

KNOWLEDGES BORN IN THE STRUGGLE Constructing the Epistemologies of the Global South

Edited by Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Maria Paula Meneses

First published 2020 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Taylor & Francis The right of Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Maria Paula Meneses to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-36211-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-36207-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-34459-6 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Lumina Datamatics Limited This book was developed in the context of the research project Alice – Strange Mirrors, Unsuspected Lessons, coordinated by Boaventura de Sousa Santos at the Centre for Social Studies of the Coimbra University – Portugal between 2011 and 2016. The project was funded by the European Research Council, 7th Framework Program of the European Union (Fp/2007-13)/ERC Grant Agreement n. [269807]. This publication also benefits from the financial support of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology under the strategic Program UID/SOC/50012/2019 and BLEND - PTDC/CVIANT/6100/2014 - POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016859, which also counted upon funding from FEDER through the Program COMPETE 2020.

CONTENTS

List of Figures List of Contributors Preface Introduction

x xi xiv xvii

PART I

Unveiling the Eurocentric Roots of Modern Knowledge 1 Global Social Thought via the Haitian Revolution Gurminder K. Bhambra 2 Making the Nation Habitable Shahid Amin

1 3 21

PART II

Other Territories, Other Epistemologies: Amplifying the Knowledges of the South 3 Thinking-Feeling with the Earth: Territorial Struggles and the Ontological Dimension of the Epistemologies of the South Arturo Escobar

39

41

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Contents

4 On Finding the Cinerarium for Uncremated Ubuntu: On the Street Wisdom of Philosophy Mogobe Ramose

58

5 Problematic People and Epistemic Decolonization: Toward the Postcolonial in Africana Political Thought Lewis R. Gordon

78

6 Chacha-warmi: Another Form of Gender Equality, from the Perspective of Aymara Culture Yanett Medrano Valdez

96

PART III

The Arts and the Senses in the Epistemologies of the South 7 Toward an Aesthetics of the Epistemologies of the South: Manifesto in Twenty-Two Theses Boaventura de Sousa Santos

115 117

8 What’s in a Name? Utopia—Sociology—Poetry Maria Irene Ramalho

126

9 Food as a Metaphor for Cultural Hierarchies Gopal Guru

146

10 Tastes, Aromas, and Knowledges: Challenges to a Dominant Epistemology Maria Paula Meneses

162

PART IV

Decolonizing Knowledge: The Multiple Challenges

181

11 The Recolonization of the Indian Mind Peter Ronald deSouza

183

12 Epistemic Extractivism: A Dialogue with Alberto Acosta, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui Ramón Grosfoguel

203

Contents ix

13 Decolonizing the University Boaventura de Sousa Santos

219

Conclusion Index

241 246

LIST OF FIGURES

6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 6.9 8.1

The Andean world The four-dimensional rationale Relationality in ideas Relationality in feelings Relationality in language Relationality in spirituality Human relationality also involves coexistence Relationality in work Opposites which are inseparably linked Poem

100 101 102 102 102 103 103 103 104 138

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Shahid Amin taught history at the University of Delhi, India, until 2015. Currently, he holds the A.M. Khwaja Chair at the Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. One of the founders of the Subaltern Studies Collective, Amin has edited, A Concise Encyclopaedia of North Indian Peasant Life (2005). Among his most recent works are Writing Alternative Histories: A  View from India (2002); Conquest and Community: The Afterlife of Warrior Saint Ghazi Miyan (2016). Gurminder K. Bhambra is a professor of postcolonial and decolonial studies

in the School of Global Studies, University of Sussex, and she is the author of Connected Sociologies (2014) and Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination (2007). The  latter won the British Sociological Association’s Philip Abrams Memorial Prize for best first book in sociology. She  also edited, together with Dalia Gebrial and Kerem Nişancıoğlu, Decolonising the University  – Understanding and Transforming the Universities’ Colonial Foundations (2018). Peter Ronald deSouza is a professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi, India, and holder of the Dr S. Radhakrishnan Chair of the Rajya Sabha till April 2017. He works on issues of democratic politics and in the comparative politics of South Asia. He has recently published a book of essays, In the Hall of Mirrors: Reflections on Indian Democracy (2018). Previously edited At  Home with Democracy: A  Theory of Indian Politics (2018); Speaking of Gandhi’s Death (with Tridip Suhrud 2010); and Indian Youth in a Transforming World: Attitudes and Perceptions (with Sanjay Kumar and Sandeep Shastri 2009).

xii List of Contributors

Arturo Escobar is a professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (USA) and research associate with the Culture, Memory, and Nation group at Universidad del Valle and the Cultural Studies groups at Universidad Javeriana, Bogota (Colombia). His main interests include political ecology, ontological design, and the anthropology of development, social movements, and technoscience. Among his most important books are Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (1995); Sentipensar con la Tierra. Nuevas lecturas sobre desarrollo, territorio y diferencia (2014); and Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds (2018). Lewis R. Gordon is a professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut– Storrs; Honorary President of the Global Center for Advanced Studies; the 2018–2019 Boaventura de Sousa Santos Chair in Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra, Portugal; and chair of Global Collaborations for the Caribbean Philosophical Association. His most recent books are What Fanon Said: A Philosophical Introduction to His Life and Thought (2015); Fear of a Black Consciousness (2017); and Geopolitics and Decolonization: Perspectives from the Global South (with Fernanda F. Bragato 2017). Ramón Grosfoguel teaches in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. He  has published extensively on international migration, political-economy of the world-system, and on decolonization of knowledge and power. Among his most important books are Latino/As in the World-System: Decolonization Struggles in the 21st Century U.S. Empire (with Nelson Maldonado-Torres and Jose David Saldivar 2006); Puerto Rican Jam: Essays on Culture and Politics (with Frances Negron-Muntaner 2008); and Decolonizing the Western University (with Roberto Hernandez and Ernesto R. Velásquez 2016). Gopal Guru is a professor of social and political theory in the Center of Political Science at Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. He is the author of numerous articles on Dalits, women, politics, and philosophy. Currently, he is the editor of the journal Economic and Political Weekly. One of his most important books is Humiliation: Claims and Context (2009). Maria Paula Meneses is a Mozambican scholar and is currently a principal

researcher at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra. Previously she taught at Eduardo Mondlane University (Mozambique) and University of Seville (Spain). At  the heart of her research interests are the relations between knowledge, power, and societies, paying special attention to people who experienced the violence of the colonial encounter. Among the books she edited are Law and Justice in a Multicultural Society: The Case of Mozambique

List of Contributors xiii

(with Boaventura de Sousa Santos and João Carlos Trindade 2006); Epistemologías del Sur (Epistemologies of the South, with Boaventura de Sousa Santos 2009); and Mozambique on the Move: Challenges and Reflections (with Sheila Khan and Bjorn Bertelsen 2018). Maria Irene Ramalho is a professor emerita of Faculdade de Letras and senior

researcher at Center for Social Studies, both at Coimbra University, as well as international affiliate of Department of Comparative Literature (University of Wisconsin-Madison). Among her most important publications are Atlantic Poets (2003), Poetry in the Machine Age (Cambridge History of American Literature, V 2003). She  co-edited The  American Columbiad (1996), Translocal Modernisms (2008), Transnational, Post Imperialist American Studies? (2010), and America Where? (2012). Mogobe Ramose was born in South Africa, and he was granted political asylum

in Belgium where he obtained the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from Louvain University. Currently, he is a research professor in the Department of Clinical Psychology, Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University in Ga-Rankuwa, South Africa. He  lectures particularly in philosophy of law, philosophy of religion, ethics, and African philosophy in universities in Western Europe and Africa. He  published several books, including African Philosophy Through Ubuntu (1999) and The Development of Thought in Pan Africanism (with Mosupyoe Boatamo 2011). Boaventura de Sousa Santos is emeritus professor of sociology and director of

the Center for Social Studies, University of Coimbra (Portugal), and distinguished legal scholar at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (USA). He  has written and published widely on the issues of globalization, sociology of law and the state, epistemology, and social movements. Among his most recent publications are Cognitive Justice in a Global World: Prudent Knowledges for a Decent Life (2007); Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide (2014); If God Were a Human Rights Activist, Stanford University Press (2015); Épistémologies du Sud (2016); Decolonising the University: The Challenge of Deep Cognitive Justice (2017); and The End of the Cognitive Empire: The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South (2018). Yanett Medrano Valdez is a member of the Institute of Studies of Andean

Cultures, Peru where she currently coordinates the research council. A native of Peru, from Quechua and Aymara families, she is interested in approaching the Aymara and Quechua peoples to learn and relearn their sense of life. Their cultural matrices have encouraged the research on the interrelations between Andean cultures, gender, coloniality, decoloniality, and intercultural dialogue, themes that are present in various articles that she has written in Spanish.

PREFACE

The  global North continues to reproduce its economic, political, and ontological domination over the global South, even if the epistemology underlying such domination is showing signs of exhaustion. This epistemological project, although internally rather heterogeneous, conceived Eurocentric knowledge and modern science as the only valid knowledge, capable of guaranteeing a sustainable management of the tension between social regulation and social emancipation in modern metropolitan societies. In its terms, any crisis of social regulation led to the emergence of a credible social emancipation alternative which in turn became the new pattern of social regulation. Whatever the past trajectory of that management may have been, the truth is that today the global crisis of social regulation, which is evident, instead of creating room for new and credible conceptions of social emancipation, reproduces itself and becomes deeper thanks to the equally evident crisis of social emancipation—the idea that there is no alternative to the current state of affairs. The simultaneous presence of these two crises gives contemporary societies a character of permanent crisis. Since the epistemologies of the North provide no solution to this crisis, they tend to transform the critical situation in which we live into the new normality. Herein lies their exhaustion. This book aims to contribute to an epistemological alternative focused on the epistemologies of the South (Santos 2014, 2018a). Only on the basis of these epistemologies will it be possible to (re)found credible conceptions of social regulation and social emancipation. The South of the epistemologies of the South is not a geographical south. It is an epistemological South, a South heir of struggles for other knowledges and forms of being, a South born in struggles against

Preface

xv

the three modern forms of domination: capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy. This threefold domination has for many centuries been legitimated by the power-knowledge privileged by the epistemologies of the North. The hierarchies among ways of knowing and being thereby produced led to the global imposition of an abyssal thinking, which divides the world into two incommensurable forms of sociability: metropolitan sociability and colonial sociability. The abyss, the metaphor of the radical separation of these two forms of sociability, mirrors the dichotomy and the hierarchy that legitimizes the radical social exclusions generated by class, ethno-racial inequalities, religion and spirituality discriminations, and gender oppression, among others. Indeed, people subjected to colonial sociability are considered as not being fully human and, accordingly, are radically excluded from the forms of social regulation and social emancipation that characterize metropolitan sociability. The  epistemic global South is the ways of knowing and the wisdom generated in the resistance against abyssal exclusion and the ontological degradation and political nullification it entails. These epistemic struggles for (re)existence have generated a number of political forms in the past: Nuestra América, pan-Africanism, pan-Arabism, pan-Asianism, the Non-Aligned Movement, and, more recently, the World Social Forum. This book aims to demonstrate that there is no global social justice without global cognitive justice. The goal of epistemologies of the South is to achieve global cognitive justice, thereby empowering in new and more efficient ways the oppressed social groups and actors in both the geographical global South and the geographical global North. The chapters in this book were written in the ambit of the research project Alice – Strange Mirrors, Unsuspected Lessons, coordinated by Boaventura de Sousa Santos at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra. They  argue that the absence of alternatives to the profound inequalities and repugnant discriminations that characterize contemporary societies is merely apparent. Alternatives do exist, although they are invisibilized or discredited by the epistemologies of the North. Thus, what is indeed missing is an alternative thinking of alternatives. As presented in the chapters, the epistemologies of the South offer this alternative thinking, by claiming as core epistemic, political, and methodological tools the ecologies of knowledges and intercultural and inter-political translation. Special thanks are due to the Center for Social Studies of Coimbra University, which has institutionally hosted this project. Without the precious help of its administrative and academic structures, this project and its subsequent transformation into a research program, a program to support new forms of political action, would not have been possible. The preparation of this manuscript counted on the support and the dedicated collaboration of a number of people, among whom a special mention must be made of Rita Oliveira, Lassalete Paiva,

xvi Preface

and Margarida Gomes. Last, but not least, we are grateful to the editing and translation team: Victor Ferreira (who read the chapters and carefully checked all references) and Sheena Caldwell and Isabel Pedro for their careful translation into English of several chapters in this volume. Boaventura de Sousa Santos Maria Paula Meneses

INTRODUCTION Epistemologies of the South—Giving Voice to the Diversity of the South Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Maria Paula Meneses

Introduction Having inherited a tradition of resistance to the colonialist and imperialist aims that prevented it from representing and changing the world in its own terms and according to its own aspirations, the global South is now  an extremely wide field of experiments in fighting for a better world, a world that is respectful of dignity and humanity in its diversity. Everywhere, from Asia to Europe, from the Americas to Africa, from Australia to the Caribbean, a heterogeneous mass of subaltern groups—peasants and landless laborers, unemployed people, women, indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples, informal workers, people who live in favelas, in peripheries and on the streets, environmentalist groups, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender/Transsexual and Intersexed (LGTBI), and marginalized youths—organize into associations and social movements aiming to challenge the social exclusion to which the capitalist, colonial, and patriarchal system has been subjecting them for centuries. Notwithstanding this political vibrancy, the global South is rarely seen as a source of theory capable of explaining historical world events. What is there to be learned from these struggles? What knowledges are produced within these processes of resistance, so varied and abundant in human experience? Knowing the world from the point of view of its diversity is the great challenge posed by the epistemologies of the South. The  epistemologies of the South are “a time of epistemological imagination aimed at refounding the political imagination […] to strengthen the social struggles against domination” (Santos 2018a: 126–127). By “occupying” the conventional concept of epistemology, the epistemologies of the South appropriate it in order to stimulate the production and validation of knowledges anchored in the experiences of

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resistance and struggle of the social groups that systematically suffer the injustice, the oppression, and the destruction caused by capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy (Santos 2018a: 1).1 Knowledges have different identities, generating interactions that arise from the needs and the objectives of social struggles. The epistemologies of the South enhance the world’s cognitive diversity while simultaneously setting up procedures aimed at promoting inter-knowledge and inter-intelligibility. Hence, the importance of such concepts as the ecologies of knowledges, intercultural and inter-political translation, and the artisanship of practices2 (Santos 2014: 188–211). Instead of polarization or the dogmatism of absolute opposition, so frequent in academic disputes, the epistemologies of the South choose to build bridges between comfort zones and discomfort zones and between the familiar and the alien in the fields of struggle against oppression.3 Taken together, the texts included in this volume are an example of an ecology of knowledges, which is fundamental for an alternative thinking of alternatives capable of renewing and strengthening social resistance struggles against three major forms of domination: capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy.4

Epistemologies of the South—Learning with the South and from the South5 The global South, a category that has inherited Third World struggles for liberation, mirrors a constellation of political, ontological, and epistemological aspirations whose knowledges are validated by the success of the struggles. It is, therefore, an epistemological rather than a geographical South, consisting of multiple epistemologies produced when and where those struggles occur, both in the geographical North and in the geographical South, in different cultural, historical, political, social, and even circumstantial contexts (Santos 1995, 2002, 2007). Timewise, this moment of the South is characterized as the moment of the return of the subalterns, of the wretched of the earth (Fanon 1961). Santos’ Manifesto for Good Living/Buen Vivir identifies its true subjects as follows: We are not victims; we are victimized and offer resistance. We are many, and we use our new learning in very different ways. (Santos 2014: 10) This is not only an epistemic return, but also an ontological one. By occupying epistemology, oppressed social groups—those who do not count as human and whose knowledges are not valid in the face of the hegemony of Western modern thinking—claim their humanity by representing the world as their own and in their own terms. Only thus will they be able to transform it according to their own aspirations. Thinking from the South requires an epistemic decolonization of the world of human experiences, a world which is rooted, on the one hand, in the

Introduction xix

categorization of the Other and the Other’s knowledges as local and/or inferior, and, on the other, in the legitimization of science as the sole valid source of knowledge. For this to be possible, the concept of abyssal thinking proposed by Santos to characterize the form of thinking which, in our time, remains hostage to colonial modes of interpreting the world becomes indispensable. Abyssal thought is constituted on the basis of a system of visible and invisible distinctions, where the invisible ones are the foundation of the visible ones. The invisible distinctions are established through radical lines that divide social reality into two realms, the realm of “this side of the line”, the metropolis, and the realm of “the other side of the line”, the colonized space. (Santos 2007: 45) This  abyssal division generated by imperial epistemology renders “the other side of the line” insignificant, residual as a reality, or even produces it as nonexistent. This abyssal thinking, which has founded modernity, constructs the subjects of the South as objects of which one speaks and which it does not recognize as being fully human.6 In any case, they are beings whose knowledges are of no use to the colonial metropolitan centers. Identifying, knowing, and denouncing the abyssal line makes it possible to open up new horizons concerning the cultural, political, and epistemic diversity of the world. The epistemic, plural South seeks to radically change the Eurocentric canon and to transform Southern struggles and experiences into sources capable of generating theory and insight into the diversity that exists in our world.7 Far from assuming the South as a homogenous project, the epistemologies of the South call for an active shift in the way the world is (re)cognized and (re)interpreted, as a collective effort, from a condition of ignorance of the multiple knowledges that exist in the world (Santos 2014). The epistemologies of the South start from the premise that neither modern science nor  any other form of knowledge are capable of capturing the inexhaustible experience and diversity of the world. All knowledges are incomplete: the wider the knowledge of the diversity of knowledges, the deeper the awareness of the fact that their nature is constructed. A better understanding of the diversity of knowledges circulating in the world brings with it a better understanding of their respective limits and of the ignorance they produce. As Santos (2009) observes, there is no knowledge in general just as there is no ignorance in general. The acquired ignorance that stems from this awareness is a learned ignorance, requiring laborious reflective and interpretive work as to its limits, the possibilities unveiled by those knowledges that have been overlooked until now, and what this awareness potentially requires of us. The epistemologies of the South focus on silenced knowledges or knowledges that are produced as non-existent. They are so considered because they are not created according to acceptable, or even intelligible, methodologies, or

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because they are created by “absent” subjects, subjects who are conceived of as incapable of producing valid knowledge due to their unpreparedness or even due to their not fully human condition. Methodologically, the epistemologies of the South must proceed in line with the sociology of absences (Santos 2014), that is, they must transform absent subjects into present subjects as a primary condition for identifying and validating knowledges capable of reinventing social emancipation and liberation. The  task of the sociology of absences is to produce a radical diagnosis of capitalist, colonial, and patriarchal relations, whereas the sociology of emergences seeks to transform the landscape generated by the diagnosis of absence into a vast field of living, rich, and innovative social experience. These are two fundamental conditions for the epistemologies of the South, since, as we maintain, social justice is not possible in the absence of cognitive justice. Cognitive justice is achieved through both the ecology of knowledges and intercultural translation. In Santos’ words, The ecologies of knowledges are collective cognitive constructions led by the principles of horizontality (different knowledges recognize the differences between themselves in a non-hierarchical way) and reciprocity (differently incomplete knowledges strengthen themselves by developing relations of complementarity among one another). (Santos 2018a: 78) Any exercise in the ecology of knowledges must be complemented with intercultural and inter-political translation. As a methodological tool, intercultural translation contributes toward transforming the world’s epistemological and cultural diversity into a favorable factor that fosters articulation between the struggles against capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy.8 Inter-political translation, in turn, specifically aims to improve reciprocal intelligibility between struggles without dissolving their identity, thereby helping to identify complementarities and contradictions, common grounds, and alternative visions (Santos 2018a: 32). The global South built upon these premises is made up of a variety of histories and experiences of struggle that must be known and acknowledged in a spirit of solidarity as one of the ways of affirming the existence of other ways of being in the world. A deep knowledge of the affinities, divergences, complementarities, and contradictions among different knowledges makes it possible to maximize both solidarity and the effectiveness of the struggles against oppression, which finds expression in the utopia of a post-abyssal world. This is how cognitive justice becomes the key condition for social justice (Meneses 2009). The ecology of knowledges and the possibilities of translation between cultures and struggles, which are true pedagogical challenges, are crucial when it comes to evaluating solid decisions on alliances between social groups and to defining concrete initiatives and assessing their potentialities and their limits.

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The South poses a number of different challenges to the dominant political canon, putting forward alternative proposals. Beyond any essentialist proposal that might crystallize “traditional political culture” (which could be transposed, unchanged, from the past to the present), culture is approached in a plural, transformative manner, and endowed with liberating potential. In  parallel, these epistemological challenges from the South invoke other ontologies, revealing other modes of being of peoples who have been radically excluded from the dominant modes of being and knowing (Santos 2018b). Since these subjects are produced as absent through extremely unequal power relations, redeeming them is an eminently political gesture. Among many engaged intellectuals, names like Nkrumah, Ghandi, Fanon, Memmi, alAfghani, Mariatégui, W. E. B. Du Bois, Lenin, Sun Yat-sen, Cabral, Césaire, and Senghor stand out. They have in common a sense of struggle understood as both a bearer and a creator of culture, which allows them to call for a different ontology:9 recognizing the potentially infinite diversity of the world and, through the projects and the challenges posed by the struggles, generating a broad front of solidarity in the South (Santos 2018a: 1). A return to the roots, to the stories that are not teleologically determined by the European colonial-capitalist project, explains the concern to include in struggle projects the histories of resistance of Asian, African, and Latin-American peoples. As regards anticolonial nationalist struggles, Amílcar Cabral, one of the most influential intellectuals of the global South, points out that “the struggle for liberation is, above all, an act of culture” (1976: 223). Diop (1955) explains how, being a narrative of power, any history necessarily generates conflict and opposition and is therefore a terrain of struggle. In the Latin-American context, Cusicanqui (2012) shows how the perverse association between colonialism and patriarchy has generated a close connection between power and knowledge that has lasted to this day and is filled with the silence of exclusions, erasures, distortions, and arbitrary fictions about women in contemporary political history. An open challenge to colonial history, the struggle of colonized peoples for self-determination emerges as a claim for the decolonization of their history, a dynamic project founded on situated struggle experiences, operating as a network (Meneses 2010, 2016). Debates concerning the meaning of the “South” combine academic exercises with political options, oftentimes bearing important practical implications. The list of successes, at different scales, of the struggles of oppressed social groups that keep putting up resistance to political and epistemic oppression is quite significant: bilingual education projects running; an actual acknowledgement of legal pluralism in different countries; the gradual inclusion of new concepts from the “South”—corazonar, ubuntu, etc.—are examples of achievements that highlight the importance of Southern perspectives in the intensely political arena of ontological and epistemological claims. These examples reflect what Santos calls “ruins-seeds,” simultaneously

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memories and futures, signaling autonomous knowledge practices as well as their application in different dimensions of individual and collective life (Santos 2018a: 29–30).

The Roots of the Global South This section focuses on the historical emergence of the global South and the projects that preceded it, such as the Third World, examining how inequalities and absences lie at the heart of the creation of beings without knowledges, as a result of such political projects as colonization and, today, capitalist neoliberal globalization. Also addressed are the different ways in which people and communities have responded to such projects, gradually reformulating the terms of global political engagement in the process. One of the key concepts here is decolonization, beyond its meaning as a static referent signaling political independence. Decolonization is rather a multi-layered process whose duration continues beyond political independence. A diachronic analysis of decolonization allows it to be seen as a broad historical process of transition and translation between experiences and struggles. For the epistemologies of the South, the independence of the colonies did not mean the end of colonialism. It only meant that it underwent a mutation. Being also a process of ontological and epistemological restitution, decolonization is based on the acknowledgement of silenced knowledges and on the reconstruction of humanity. Decolonization processes are witness to the numerous alternatives to modern hegemonic thinking. At  the end of the day, as Achille Mbembe highlights, “there is only one world. It is composed of a totality of a thousand parts. Of everyone. Of all worlds” (Mbembe 2017: 180). The  movement toward epistemic and ontological decolonization does not  follow a teleological path. Social struggles and the debates between knowledges, associated with political and economic changes, are what help us identify and characterize those spaces of struggle. Exposing the extreme epistemic and ontological colonial violence that continues to haunt the world and knowing or recognizing the world’s epistemic diversity requires a reconceptualization of the South. Which South is relevant to the struggles against capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy? And to whom is this struggle important? The epistemic South is diverse, reflecting the diversity of the world’s experiences. Dialogues between these experiences are fundamental in the struggle against oppression and in the search for alternatives; in these meetings, knowledges must be evaluated and validated according to their usefulness in maximizing the chances of success in struggles, instead of any one of them imposing itself forcibly on any of the others. It is essential to recognize that the objectivity of the world cannot be captured on the basis of a single experience, whatever this experience may be.

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Epistemic Violence as a Foundational Element of Colonialism In  A  Discourse on the Sciences, Santos (1992) anticipates the reflection on the epistemologies of the South. This manuscript demonstrates how the hegemonic model of modern science has its origin in the scientific rationality imposed from the European Enlightenment on. This rationality was responsible for a tradition of political and cultural domination that reduces to a Eurocentric perspective the diversity of knowledges in the world, the diversity of the meaning of life, and the diversity of social practices. Among the many nefarious consequences stemming from the blind, univocal application of a supposedly universal principle is how it has been used since the late nineteenth century to justify the civilizing mission of the imperial North as materialized in colonialism (Wallerstein 2006: 11). Modern colonialism10 represented much more than mere economic and political domination on the part of Europe; colonialism, as both a “civilizing mission” and an ideological proposal, was responsible for the violent exercise of denying humanity to those who inhabit colonial spaces (Santos 2006a, 2014; Meneses 2012, 2018). This ontological exercise of humanity deprivation11 functioned on the basis of a well-structured rationale meant to define, analyze, imagine, build, and regulate alterity. The “Others” emerge not as individuals or communities—with their power and knowledge structures—but rather as a homogeneous representation imagined in accordance with the colonizers’ political aims and fantasies. This civilizational arrogance, this abyssal form of thinking gave the colonizers the power of deciding which solutions should be applied regarding the future of the colonized (Meneses 2010). Mbembe (2017) argues that racism, together with the belief in the “natural” inferiority of those who inhabit colonial spaces, legitimates and keeps the brutality of colonial exploitation and the colonial civilizing and humanitarian mission operating in parallel. Founded on the denial of humanity to the “natives” populations of the colonies, abyssal colonial thinking allows, for example, European colonial powers to dissociate political action in the metropolitan space and political action in the colonial space. According to Santos, while in the former case relationships are defined by reference to the regulation-emancipation tension, in the latter, relationships are defined as a function of the appropriation-violence tension (Santos 2007). This dissociation continues to be activated by the governments of the nations considered to be the most developed countries with a view to reinforcing their domination over the global South, thereby reproducing the cycles of dependence, as will be analyzed below. From an epistemic reading of the power-knowing-being relationship created by colonial capitalism, the South emerges as the “other” side of the abyssal line, created as a “void violated” by colonialism. In  Fanon, the colonial- capitalist relation “est la violence à l’état de nature” (is the violence in its natural state) (1961: 61). This violence is expressed by Césaire in the Caribbean: “millions of

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men torn from their gods, their land, their habits, their life, from life, from the dance, from wisdom” (1955: 12). This results in successive acts of genocide and epistemicide12 (Santos 1998: 103), linguicide (Thiong’o 1993), and epistemic injustice (Bhargava 2013). Central to the colonial mission is the conquest of not only goods and lands, but also of cultures and mindsets. Through the conquest of minds (Alatas 1974), the colonial process sought to destroy the understanding of the colonized “I” of their history and their epistemology, imposing exogenous concepts and categories that guaranteed a Eurocentric geopolitical representation and direction on the “new” colonized territories and subjects (Chakrabarty 2000: 3–9; Meneses 2012). Despite its importance, this dimension of colonialism has not been adequately studied. It is about the inability to listen to and (re)cognize the other as subject, with his/her experiences and knowledges, for the very simple reason that he/she lives on the other side of the abyssal line. Chakrabarty (2000: 89) shows how European, teleological historicism can only accept one trajectory for non-Eurocentric societies on condition that they are recognized as part of the great human history; this entails going through a visible metamorphosis toward Eurocentric capitalist modernity. Thus, for Chakrabarty, allowing space to the South that steps out of the colonial shadow means “provincializing the world” by deconstructing and decolonizing the epistemologies of the North. An important part of the construction of the South from the South is founded on the construction of knowledge-producing research projects as ethical and political processes, engaged with struggles. When indigenous peoples participate in research projects as subjects, the power-knowledge relationship is radically shifted, as highlighted by Smith (1999: 1).13 The starting issues are defined jointly, priorities are organized as a function of the community’s objectives, which ultimately determines how people participate in the construction of knowledge as subjects. Recognizing both the protagonists and the reasons for these struggles is therefore an act of pre-knowledge, a pragmatic intellectual and political impulse prior to the production and validation of the knowledge generated by the struggle itself and shared among struggles (Santos 2018a: 3). It is therefore important to know what the Third World has meant from the perspective of the social struggles of the South.

The Third World: A Political Emancipation Project The  Third World is a political concept that mirrors the struggles for selfdetermination. This concept, which directly challenges political and epistemic colonialism, brings into focus the struggles conducted by subaltern, silenced peoples, reintroducing “new” political subjects.14 During the first half of the twentieth century, nationalist movements were underpinned by such discourses as a “return” to origins, prior civilizational

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projects, and socialist proposals, a consequence of the impact of the transformative changes that were occurring in Europe (Duara 2004; Priestland 2009). At the heart of the definition of the objectives of anticolonial struggles are the challenges to knowledge and to the role of science. For Gandhi, a key figure in emancipation struggles, the popularization of science should not  be reduced to linear knowledge transfer; on the contrary, it should consist in a collective effort, bringing benefits for all (Prasad 2001). As Gandhi emphasized: We are dazzled by the material progress that Western science has made. I am not enamored of that progress. In fact, it almost seems as though God in his wisdom had prevented India from progressing along those lines so that it might fulfill its special mission of resisting the onrush of materialism. (2013: 53) Attempts at erasing other knowledges and experiences were not  as successful as they were designed to be. Despite colonial-capitalist control, important discussions took place reflecting contextual concerns. Besides Ghandi’s reflections, many other examples may be mentioned, such as the Refutation of the Materialists, by al-Afghani (1983 [1881]), Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, by Lenin (1977 [1917]), Three Principles of the People, by Sun Yat-sen (1975 [1927]), or the Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality, by Mariátegui (2009 [1928]). Taken together, they include sophisticated interpretations of the relationship between the knowledges and cultures of the North and those of colonized peoples, among materialities and worldviews, and are a source of inspiration for the development and deepening of epistemologies and ontologies in the South. The reflections produced by these anticolonial emancipatory struggles include different forms of internationalist solidarity: pan-Arabism, pan-Asianism, négritude, pan-Africanism, among others.15 The leaders of these movements generated struggle strategies that combined the right to being and the right to knowing. The global dimension of the Third World as an anticolonial and anticapitalist “South” emerges in the historic declaration of the 5th Pan-African Congress (held in Manchester, in 1945), which took place at the end of World War II.16 We believe in freedom and the right of all peoples to govern themselves. We affirm the right of all colonial peoples to control their own destiny. All colonies must be free from foreign imperialist control, be it political or economic. The peoples of the colonies must have the right to choose their rulers, to elect a government without restrictions imposed by a foreign power. (Nkrumah 1973 [1945]: 42) The cry for rebellion: “Colonial and suppressed peoples of the world, unite!” that reverberated in this Congress (Nkrumah 1973 [1945]: 44) expresses this

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hope, the hope of a struggle for the right to dignity and self-affirmation, in sum, for other epistemologies and different ontologies. This message struck a particular chord in the Bandung Conference, which was held 10 years later, in 1955 (Mackie 2005). The countries that had been gaining their political emancipation after World War II (particularly former colonies) sought to articulate the idea of a global South whose interests challenged the proposals of the powers from the North, overcoming the divisions of the Cold War.17 In Bandung, president Sukarno of Indonesia defined the political projects that brought the participants together, in a message that clarified the political objectives of the emerging South: All of us, I am certain, are united by more important things than those  which superficially divide us. We are united, for instance, by a common detestation of colonialism in whatever form it appears. We are united by a common detestation of racialism. And we are united by a common  determination to preserve and stabilize peace in the world. (Sukarno 1955: 23) This strategic choice in seeking for an independent alternative to both the First World (the capitalist project led by the USA) and the Second World (the socialist version under the control of the then Soviet Union) was the beginning of what came to be known as the Non-Aligned Movement and the Third World (Prashad 2007; Mahler 2015). The political category Third World, proposed by Sauvy (1952), represented a more inclusive utopian project of unity and support for the political struggles of an emergent and very heterogeneous group of nation-states whose governments were reluctant in aligning with the political and epistemic proposals of the First and the Second Worlds.18 As Dirlik warns, the emergence of the three worlds was an attempt at a “Eurocentric mapping of the world” as a response to the tectonic political quake of post-World War II global abyssal lines. In this context, all political solutions pointed toward a future dominated by Eurocentric alternatives (Dirlik 2004: 131). Indeed, for the Third World, the reference for progress and economic development were the First or the Second World. This is the reality that will transform the Third World, as seen from the North, into a periphery and a synonym for underdevelopment. This development era brought with it a new awareness of the importance of the Third World in the global economy and politics. In different geographical contexts, development proposals were presented as a potentially liberating force to deal with the suffering and misery experienced in the peripheries or in the colonies. However, the successive economic crises in the modern world, with their especially violent impact on the Third World, have inspired many studies on the political implication of development. These analyses have exposed the ways in which development has operated historically as a liberal (and, in recent

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times, a neoliberal) governance strategy aiming at the consolidation of capitalist hegemony.19 For example, based on an ontological and epistemological appraisal of the discourse of development in three different contexts—Latin America, Africa, and Asia—, Escobar illustrates how this discourse is little more than a convenient Eurocentric “discovery” of the Third World with the purpose of reaffirming its own moral and cultural superiority. As the author stresses, “the faith in science and technology […] played an important role in the elaboration and justification of the new discourse of development” (Escobar 1995: 35). The close correlation between the global South and colonialism-influenced geopolitics is further explored by different Latin-American academics, who have put forward the dependence theory (Prebisch 1963; Marini 1973). With this conceptualization of the processes of economic development in a global space, the distinction between “center” and “periphery”, signaling a conflict between political projects from the North and from the South, became quite popular.20 In the African context, Nkrumah, among others, severely criticized the political and economic continuity through the concept of neocolonialism (1965). Along the same lines, Samir Amin’s analysis of the dynamics of dependence, based on colonial or neocolonial arrangements and on cultural structures, offered a key critical proposal regarding the interpretation of the Third World within the international capitalist system (Amin 1974a: 1977). For Amin, in capitalism, which he describes as a “self-centered system” (1974b: 10), value is transferred from the periphery to the centre through a process of unequal exchanges in which returns to labor at the periphery are less than returns to labor at the centre. These differences, which foster development in metropolitan centers and inhibit it in neocolonial contexts, are the indelible mark of the survival of abyssal thinking, where colonial-capitalist economy seizes the value produced at the periphery. For this Afro-Marxist, a liberating transformation of the African continent can only become a reality through endogenous solutions (Amin 2014: 74). In view of this, the issue is: what is the role of knowledge, of local experiences in search of alternatives for the South? (Hamdani 2013). With the expansion of African and Asian developmentalist experiments, a deeper theoretical knowledge of dependence gave rise to centre-periphery theorization, now applied to the whole world, seen as part of a global capitalist system. As Wallerstein (1974) argues, the relations created within this system form the basis for the preponderance of the centre—wealthy—over the periphery— underdeveloped and impoverished—, which translates into the legitimization and the increase of inequalities. The  author proposes a hierarchically structured world-system composed of core, semi-periphery, and periphery, a more dynamic global structure that explains economic and political transitions. Aníbal Quijano, in turn, argues that, seen from the South, the present world-system emerges, from the historical structural point of view, as a heterogeneous totality founded on a specific power matrix which he calls

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“coloniality21  of  power” (Quijano 2000: 533). Classes in Latin America, as Quijano observes, have “color,” which leads to the conclusion that, if societies do not recognize the coloniality of the power they are based on, all forms of government in this continent are doomed to fail as state-building projects. Ramón Grosfoguel further develops this reflection, showing how, as regards the international division of labor, the modern, colonial world-system articulates peripheral locations through a global ethno-racial hierarchy. In  global metropolitan cities, migrants continue to represent the periphery of the Third World, according to this very same hierarchy. As the author stresses, there is a periphery inside and outside the core zones as there is a core inside and outside the peripheral regions (Grosfoguel 2010: 74). On a different level, bell hooks questions, from a black, marginal, feminist viewpoint, the epistemic centrality that ensures capitalist domination. In her words, “being oppressed means the absence of choices” (hooks 2000: 5). This position radically challenges those who claim that capitalist, hegemonic globalization means the triumph of rationality, innovation, and freedom, which is supposedly capable of producing infinite progress and unlimited abundance.

Toward the Epistemic South One of the first theorizations of the North-South relationship is to be found in the report written by the Independent Commission on International Development Issues, led by Brandt (1980). In this work, the global hierarchy is identified as the division between a wealthy North and an impoverished, peripheral South, a space were international institutions of the North could carry out their philanthropic actions. Therefore, it is not  surprising that the text includes a series of recommendations for a “mutually beneficial” cooperation between wealthy and poor countries. The document advances the term “global South,” which was seen as “more neutral,” and implicitly supported the neoliberal hegemonic globalization under way, stressing the idea of a centre (the North Atlantic socioeconomic model) as a development model to be imposed on the rest of the world. Critical voices denounced this approach, which again hid the political and economic processes and the historical legacies that had transformed the countries of the South into poor, peripheral countries. They  also questioned the acritical memory of colonizing powers as regards the impact of their civilizational projects and called for other knowledges and perspectives from the “South.”22 As a response to these claims, the 1986 non-aligned countries meeting established a South Commission, coordinated by Julius Nyerere. Despite the fact that the Commission’s report still refers to the South as Third World, it overtly defends South-South cooperation as a mechanism to help reduce the situations of dependence on the countries in the North (The South Commission 1990: 10). This report forms part of the BRICS’ historical background (Dirlik 2015).23

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Meanwhile, the groups and movements that continued to challenge the forces of global oppression—capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy—have undergone an epistemological shift, notably from the 1980s to 1990s on. The “reemergence” of the South took place in a number of different theoretical proposals, many of which are present in the contributions from the authors of some of the chapters in this book. Words like “subaltern,” “postcolonial,” “decolonial,” among others, signal this diversity, as will be briefly mentioned below. These problematizations have now inspired important debates in social sciences all over the world, identifying the question of how different forms of oppression operate together to ensure power over the marginalized. Among many other topics, works on gender and race oppression, as well as on intersectionality, have contributed to expanding the repertoire of resistances (Moraga and Anzaldúa 1981; Crenshaw 1989; Oyěwùmí 1997; Lugones 2010). Exposing the vacuity of neoliberal ideology, different movements and groups have advanced an epistemic and ontological agenda that claims a space of agency for the South, an ontology and an epistemology capable of giving voice to those who still live on the other side of the abyssal line. This is what Santos (2003) means as he calls for struggle against the waste of experience, of social movements, and of citizen’s science involved in social struggles. These groups and movements confer political, epistemic, and ontological meaning to the South, the South as an active subject of struggles and resistance, and the non-imperial South (Santos 1995: 506–510).

Some of the Proposals That Theorize the Global South The  global South as an epistemic project is a critical challenge of our times which has led to the emergence of a number of different theoretical proposals, aligned with the proposals of the epistemologies of the South (Santos 2014, 2018a). Among others, a mention must be made to the Southern Theory, by Raewyn Connell (2007), Theory from the South, by Jean and John Comaroff (2012a), Filosofías del Sur (Philosophies of the South), by Enrique Dussel (2014), and Teologías del Sur (Theologies of the South), by Juan José Tamayo (2017). Connell believes that revitalizing the theories concerning the social in the contexts of the South is ultimately a decisive lever for enhancing democracy (2007: 230). As she emphasizes, the social sciences and the humanities engaged in struggles have the potential to generate solidarity, to produce social criticism, and to provide a thorough knowledge of power structures in society that may form the basis and support for a space of recognition and discussion. Invoking Bhabha (1994: 6), the challenge for us lies in understanding the structural situation of the South in the ongoing history of the global present, or, as Mbembe puts it, in understanding the impact of the South itself on global theories (2012). For Jean and John Comaroff, the global South is “a spatio-temporal order made of a multitude of variously articulated flows and dimensions […], at once

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political, juridical, cultural, material, virtual” (2012a: 47). For Dussel, the South represents the old colonial world as structured since the sixteenth century and intensified by the European Industrial Revolution, whose impact extended to Latin America, Bantu Africa, South-East Asia and India, and China, which, in spite of not  being a colony, has suffered the impact of the West since the nineteenth century (Dussel 2012: 11). This is, therefore, a South with strong geographical roots, a proposal similar to Connell’s conceptualization (2007). If, on the one hand, Connell shows how “colonized and peripheral societies produce social thought about the modern world” (2007: xii), on the other hand, by insisting on a geographical reading of the South, her theoretical framework is not  very sensitive to the theorization of the epistemic South produced in the geographical North. For his part, from an analysis of multiple “theologies of the South,” Juan José Tamayo aims to describe the emergence of counterhegemonic proposals, which create alternative discourses that may respond to the major current challenges: capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, authoritarianism, and fundamentalisms. In his analysis, the encounter with the epistemic South happens through intercultural, inter-religious, inter-ethnic, and interdisciplinary dialogue (Tamayo 2017). Politically, the Third World did symbolize the emergence of a multitude of new subjects; however, in most parts of the world, this ontological recognition is still bound up with political representations and theoretical interpretations based on Eurocentric concepts (e.g., the nation-state/modern nationalism). The  global South as discussed in this volume refers to alternative epistemological proposals, many of which are historically very strong, but which were nonetheless absent from the referential framework of modern nationalist projects. An uncritical use of geographical references entails the risk of erasing the political and ontological dimensions associated with the concepts of First World/Third World, or global epistemic North vs. South. For example, the BRICS meetings are often described as meetings of leaders of the global South (Hamdani 2013), a situation described by Prashad as “neoliberalism with Southern characteristics” (2012: 145). Jean and John Comaroff also identify with this argument. For them, neoliberal capitalism, focused on flexibilization and deregulation, is an experience that takes place in former colonial spaces and is then exported to the North. However, by sustaining that the South is where “the future of the global North” is prefigured (2012a: 12),24 they become hostage to the analytical proposal of the world-system. Politically, the expression “global South” has been used also as being synonymous with multilateralism (Morphet 2004). Culturally speaking, the global South is sometimes presented as an expression of transnational kitsch, as Hofmeyr (2018) suggests. Theorizing from the South carries a number of challenges, one of them being the risk of transforming one part of the interpretation of the South into the global representation of the same South; another implication is the

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absence of a pedagogical/methodological proposal on how to generate dialogue between the multiple cultures of the South. Jean and John Comaroff are aware of the risks associated with theorizing on the basis of the mobilization of such a wide-ranging concept as “Africa.” They  are nonetheless ready to take that risk and “interrogate the present and future of global capitalism and its many mediations” (2012a: 19) based on “Africa.” In a world-system where everything is anticipated and demonstrated from the North, thinking from the South per se rather than as the inferior, peripheral other side of the North requires a conversion of the terms of reference (2012b: 115).25 This open approach allows for the understanding of African participation in the construction of world history. For  the Comaroffs, African vernacular modernities have followed their own paths, shaping daily life, and providing it with moral and material content. The theorization of this South shows how the logics of neoliberal globalization are a threat also to the North, as is illustrated by chronic unemployment, the absence of employability, or the incompatibility between capitalism and democracy. In this sense, the global South represents the world of subalterns, the struggles, and the possibility of theorizing from the endogenous conditions that present themselves as an alternative to neoliberalism. Based on a complex reading of modernity in Africa, the Comaroffs analyze it as a specific aspiration and as a complicated set of realities which speak to a tortuous endogenous history on the making. This history does not run behind Euro-America; it runs ahead of it. It is an example of what might be called an “occupation” of the concept of modernity based on the African experience (Santos 2018a). Also from a critical reading of the modern capitalist world-system, Dussel believes that it is important to historicize “the causes that produced the eclipse of the philosophies of the South […] so that the growth of the philosophies of the post-colonial, peripheral, and dominated world can be achieved” (2012: 15). Dussel analyzes the ontological foundations of European domination in detail and shows that the overcoming of this supposedly universal perspective must come from the South. One of Dussel’s most important proposals is “transmodernity,” which the author defines as going beyond, retrieving the knowledges which Eurocentric modernity failed to value (Dussel 2002: 221). The ultimate aim of transmodernity is creating a pluriverse where “each culture shall engage in dialogue with the others based on their common “similarity,” continually recreating their own analogical “distinction” (2012: 30). For the author (Dussel 2014), decolonization is achieved through re-learning, dialogically and in a mutually enriching manner, with other philosophical proposals, which brings it closer to the proposal of an ecology of knowledges, one of the pillars of the epistemologies of the South. Along the same line, and based on the epistemologies of the South, Tamayo aims to “break with the stereotypes of a supposedly universal subject” by applying the sociology of absences, this being a fundamental condition for allowing the emergence of other theologies which “de-normalize,” “de-naturalize,”

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“de-sacralize,” and “de-divinize” the Eurocentric religious canon (Tamayo 2017: 63). In this way, as the author emphasizes, it becomes possible to identify “new” subjects, giving rise to new theological discourses which generate new ontologies and new epistemologies. From a converging standpoint, Connell (2007) proposes the theory of the South as a decolonizing theoretical constellation which is quite varied internally. In line with the epistemologies of the South, she writes: “we cannot […] [treat] Southern theory as if it were a distinct set of propositions, an alternative paradigm to be erected in opposition to the hegemonic concepts. We don’t want another system of intellectual dominance” (2014: 218). This empirical proposal, based on a practical and theoretical experience of colonial societies, approaches concepts and realities such as class, labor, and family from a different angle, permitting the identification of new problems and new approaches to old problems. As a polysemic expression, the global South reflects different political and epistemological trajectories. The global South is both a reality and a proposalin-progress. It  must not  be defined a priori, but rather be articulated in the context of provisional and changing processes of political praxis. This makes it possible to characterize and understand its usage according to the different contexts while remaining aware of its change. Thus, the global South is an ideal possibility situated between the objective realities experienced by the groups and movements engaged in the global struggle against capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy and the different subjective responses provided by these groups and movements. By challenging a powerful global North, this resisting global South claims the possibility of “another possible world,” which was translated into a series of events that marked the beginning of the twenty-first century: among others, the Zapatista uprising in Mexico, the World Social Forum, and the different African Renaissance projects (Santos 2006b; Thiong’o 2009). These emergences signal potential liberated zones, spaces organized according to rules and principles radically different from those that are prevalent in capitalist, colonial, and patriarchal societies (Santos 2018a: 31). In parallel, this diversity of knowledges and theorizations consubstantiates the impossibility of a single theory to characterize our time and calls for a theory of theories that can account for the geopolitical changes that the world has undergone in recent years and where the global South is approached not only from local and national struggles, but also from the articulations and translations between movements and struggles (Santos 2007, 2014). Struggles in the South are diverse, as are the alternative radical, or even utopian, proposals that have been advanced. As Santos puts it, these are proposals for possible futures, an imagination that challenges the need of what there is just because it exists, in the name of something that is radically better, which humankind has a right to, and which is worth fighting for (1995: 515). In the words of the Palestinian poet Ziadah (2011), these alternatives are generated in

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the struggle, and they reflect all the shades of anger, an anger that yields rebel and mobilizing knowledges and proposals. They form an integral part of the world’s liberating self-education.

The Epistemic South Shared in This Book Unveiling the Eurocentric Roots of Modern Knowledge Questioning the Eurocentric history of modern knowledge constitutes the first part of this book. It opens with an essay by Gurminder Bhambra, entitled Global Social Thought via the Haitian Revolution. Bhambra claims that the Haitian Revolution is one of the most important episodes in the construction of the modern world and that, despite its relevance, it is also one of the most neglected or omitted topics in the dominant historical and sociological literature. The  Haitian Revolution clearly illustrates the possibilities of an alternative (re)thinking of history based on an approach in line with the epistemologies of the South. Bhambra denounces the “cognitive injustices” that stem from the local, truncated versions of many historical readings defined as global and proposes that they be corrected based on what she calls “connected sociologies.” In Chapter 2, Making the Nation Habitable, Shahid Amin, a member of the Subaltern Studies Group, analyzes the political project behind the building of modern nations. The  author examines the stridency of the discourse on nation and nationalism in India (and also in Pakistan and Bangladesh) throughout the last decades. This chapter is a stimulating, thought- provoking intervention in the debates about identity policies in the modern nation-state and about the simplistic antagonisms between us and them often present in national projects. As the author highlights, the nation cannot be made inhabitable by ruining the many dwellings, the many histories in which the Indian peoples have taken shelter historically—with or without conflict. It  is therefore urgent to produce non-sectarian histories of past conflicts, victories, and defeats.

Other Territories, Other Epistemologies: Amplifying the Knowledges of the South In Chapter 3, Escobar invites us to Thinking-Feeling with the Earth: Territorial Struggles and the Ontological Dimension of the Epistemologies of the South. The  author aims to broaden his dialogue with some of the contemporary currents of critical theory that share with the epistemologies of the South the need to learn from the struggles of subaltern social groups, from the experience into which they translate, and from the knowledges thereby generated. The critique of Eurocentric modernity and its reductionist view of

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the world opens the way forward toward a political ontology that opposes the hierarchy of knowledge, ecological, social, and cultural devastation, a counterhegemonic ontology founded on the knowledges of social movements (associations of Afro-descendants, women, peasants from different Colombian regions). From the practices and knowledges of these groups, a set of concepts such as “sentir-pensar” (feeling-thinking), “buen-vivir” (good living), the “Rights of Nature,” and the idea of “a world in which many worlds fit,” proposed by Zapatista communities, become relevant. In Escobar’s opinion, these concepts found the idea of a pluriverse. Chapter 4, written by Mogobe Ramose, has the title On Finding the Cinerarium for Uncremated Ubuntu. Ramose starts by asking: what does it mean to continue to ignore Ubuntu, that is, treating it like a marginal note in history and in the discourse on ethics, politics, economy, and law in South Africa? Identifying himself historically as one of the “wretched of the earth,” the author claims that each person has a right to exist and to think in accordance with her/his own philosophical references. Engaging in dialogue with Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Ramose argues that it is possible to build a philosophy without books. This philosophy challenges us to learn from a silent wisdom, based on African vernacular languages, and to live by it. In  Chapter  5, Lewis Gordon revisits the problem of the decolonization of thought in an essay entitled Problematic People and Epistemic Decolonization. Toward the Postcolonial in Africana Political Thought. This chapter focuses on the contribution of the African diaspora toward the further development of epistemologies, listing its specific contributions: on the one hand, a recognition of the plurality of knowledges and, on the other, a deep philosophical reflection that may serve as a basis to support social and political changes free from the de-humanizing forces of colonial-capitalist relations. Drawing from the reflections of two philosophers from the African diaspora—W.E.B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon—, Gordon lists the conditions for a liberating ethics of the colonial condition. This ethical (re) construction also requires a transformation of political life, leading it away from the violence within which it was born and which continues to be the foundation of the dominant contemporary neoliberal paradigm. In Chapter 6, Chacha-warmi: Another Way of Gender Equity as Seen from the Perspective of Aymara Culture, Yanett Medrano Valdez approaches ontological dilemmas from a discussion of the conceptual category of gender based on the reality of indigenous peoples of the Andean region. She  criticizes the colonizing interpretations of indigenous cultural worlds in America, showing how the descriptions, explanations, and interpretations produced from the perspective of Western rationality have generated a negative representation of the relationships between men and women in the Aymara culture. Besides being negatively evaluated, cultural elements are modified and stripped of all context, and analyzed according to Eurocentric feminist emancipatory references.

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The Arts and the Senses in the Epistemologies of the South In  Chapter  7, Boaventura de Sousa Santos explores the possibilities opened by the epistemologies of the South for new conceptions of art and aesthetics. He proposes a Manifesto of 22 theses. Santos conceives of the post-abyssal artist as an expert on identifying, denouncing, and seeking to supersede the abyssal line and the radical exclusions it produces. The artist is thus potentially a privileged practitioner of sociology of absences and sociology of emergences, a visionary of alternatives in a world seemingly deprived of them. The architecture and civil engineering metaphor of the cantilever is used to characterize an aesthetics poised to capture the light of darkness and the darkness of light. Chapter  8, What’s in a Name? Utopia—Sociology—Poetry, by Maria Irene Ramalho, argues that the major goal of the work of sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos is to contribute to making our increasingly unfair world equitably habitable by all. For  such a task, the rational language of the social sciences alone is not enough. Santos’ utopian thinking includes poetry and the arts, the only way to give a local habitation and a name to his sociological imaginings. Ramalho further suggests that Santos, as a poet, already performs the epistemologies of the South that he has been long proposing as an epistemological and research program for the social sciences and the humanities. Chapter 9 is authored by Gopal Guru. In it, the author proposes a reflection on Food as a Metaphor for Cultural Hierarchies. Food is not just what one eats. The preparation of food produces a hierarchy of cultural relationships within social groups. In  the Indian case, the status of food signals the presence of inequalities and cultural hierarchies that cause humiliation and lead to human rights deprivation. The practice of cooking reproduces different types of—horizontal and vertical— distinctions in the context of the dietary practices of different castes. The struggle of the Dalits against domination based on caste hierarchy shows how the resistance policies of subaltern groups may include food recipes. Chapter  10, Tastes, Aromas and Knowledges: Challenges to a Dominant Epistemology, is authored by Maria Paula Meneses. This chapter focuses on the memories of violent colonial encounters that have generated abyssal fractures and continue to affect the academic and the political fields. Drawing on the Indian Ocean colonial encounters, the author considers the possibility that tastes and odors may form part of the ecologies of knowledges called for by the epistemologies of the South and thus contribute to enhancing the comprehension of the diversity of subjectivities in the world.

Decolonizing Knowledge: Multiple Challenges In  Chapter  11, The  Recolonization of the Indian Mind, Peter Ronald deSouza engages in a critical analysis of modern university. The author lists the challenges that have faced India in its search for mental decolonization. This chapter

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describes the new and worrying recolonization of the Indian mind carried out by consultancy agencies, which produce knowledge outside the university, serving the interests of global capital. In  the author’s view, neoliberalism in India goes hand in hand with mental recolonization. Chapter  12 is titled Epistemic Extractivism: A  Dialogue with Alberto Acosta, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui. Here, Ramón Grosfoguel, drawing on the experience of three authors from the global South, approaches the concept of extractivism through a critical review of the practices of capitalism and colonialism. Grosfoguel puts forward the concept of epistemic extractivism, which consists in the extraction of scientific or environmental ideas from the contexts where they were produced, depoliticizing and resignifying them according to Western logics and global capitalist and colonial interests. As an alternative to extractivism, Grosfoguel proposes deep reciprocity. And lastly, in Chapter 13, Decolonizing the University, Boaventura de Sousa Santos analyzes the impact of the articulations between capitalism and colonialism in the modern university system. The author specifically focuses on two of the major struggles that have marked the university in recent decades; the social struggles for the right to university education, which questioned the legitimacy of the university itself, and the global pressure on the university to comply with the relevance and efficacy criteria of global capitalism.

Conclusion The different chapters in this book clearly illustrate the world’s epistemological diversity, as called for by the epistemologies of the South. They all have in common the idea that there is no global social justice without global cognitive justice. These reflections originate in alternative ontological and epistemological paradigms aimed at giving visibility to, while strengthening, the struggles of resistance against modern Eurocentric domination. Anchored in specific historical and sociological contexts, the essays in this volume evince the bond between forms of knowledge, being, and resisting. Together, they invite an emancipatory imagination based on the recognition of the plurality of conceptions and active, empirical constructions of a better society. By going beyond an uncritical celebration of decolonization, which tends to ignore the problematic ethical, ideological, and political foundations of this project (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013: 94), the epistemologies of the South seek to build bridges between struggles in the global South, in a decolonizing effort. The aim is to produce a humanistic knowledge beyond the colonial trail, aspiring to a plural, demystified history of humankind that considers both the achievements and the oppression and violence perpetrated in the name of humanity. This is a network knowledge that aims to decolonize itself from any knowledge that seeks to impose itself as the only, or the most important knowledge, as well as

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from all forms of violence. It is a call upon the ecologies of knowledges to make it possible for humanity to be (re)cognized and to retrieve life and subaltern, silenced knowledges that inhabit the South in the modern world, breaking down walls and removing abyssal fractures. According to Paulin Hountondji, it entails ensuring “that the margin be no longer margin but part and parcel of a multifaceted whole, a center of decision among other decision-making centers, an autonomous center of knowledge production among others” (1997: 36). This is how we learn with the South and from the South, the global South of alternative struggles, resistance and re-existence, which can only be known and duly recognized from the epistemic South. The aim is to strengthen, develop, and partake in the construction of a post-abyssal utopia, of cognitive justice and of a political force that decisively opposes the pedagogy of destruction and impunity that supports colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy. It is fighting for dignified life to exist and flourish. This opens up an ample process of decolonization, which in some aspects is only beginning, whereas in others has been recently experiencing some alarming setbacks. Besides multifaceted, this is also a translocal process which gradually produces a subaltern cosmopolitanism as it establishes articulations among different struggles through a mutual and, if possible, horizontal acknowledgement of the different repertoires and narratives of resistance. These knowledges and the struggles that they produce are the building blocks that serve as a foundation for a politics of hope in a post-abyssal world.

Notes 1 In organizing this volume, we have sought not to approach concepts such as race, ethnicity, gender, and class as independent reflections. On the contrary, these categories are treated as overlapping characteristics that are inextricably linked and intersect in the way they generate and sustain global systems of oppression and inequality. The chapters have been organized in such a way as to include these categories as a whole. 2 According to Santos (2018a), the artisanship of practices represents the apex of the work of the epistemologies of the South. It consists in designing and validating the practices of struggle and resistance carried out according to the premises of the epistemologies of the South. Given the unequal and combined nature of the articulations between the three modern modes of domination, no social struggle, no matter how strong it may be, can be successful if it conceives of itself and organizes itself as targeting only one of those domination modes. Thence the need to build articulations between struggles and resistances. 3 In this sense, the epistemologies of the South are not the symmetrical opposite of the epistemologies of the North—in the sense of opposing a single valid knowledge to another single valid knowledge. The epistemologies of the South express the silenced, subaltern, hindered epistemologies, on the basis of their contexts and actions, aiming to dialogue with the rationalist epistemologies (Santos 2009). 4 The interplay of these forms of oppression occurs in specific ways in different parts of the world and/or in different historical periods; in the South, the contingency of the resistance struggles against domination may determine that, in a given place

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5 6 7

8

9 10

11 12 13

14 15 16 17

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or at a given time, fighting against one of the modes of domination may be more urgent than fighting against any of the others. To these, other forms of oppression, such as caste systems, age groups, or dominant religions, are contextually added. On this challenge, see Santos (1995). As Fanon explains regarding colonial violence in Algeria, “the Arab, permanently an alien in his own country, lives in a state of absolute depersonalization. What is the status of Algeria? A systematized dehumanization” (1967: 53). The notion of the experience lived (in the body and in the mind) by those who are or who have been subjected to capitalist, colonialist, and patriarchal domination is an experience lived in the strong sense of the word, since those living it have no choice but to live it and resist to it while they remain victims of oppression (Santos 2018a: 81). Translation is a process of political, epistemic, and ontological displacement that generates exchanges between different places, knowledges, and struggles. It requires moving toward what you do not know, or what you barely know, which is a key condition for generating a broader solidarity capable of articulating different scales (local, national, regional, global). This  “other” incorporates the histories, struggles, experiences, and knowledges built and lived through the colonial, capitalist, and patriarchal relationship, which includes a number of different subalternization processes. One of the problems with defining this concept has to do with the fact that colonialism is associated with imperialism. Imperialism is often analyzed as a historical stage in the development of capitalism, extending its characterization beyond the historical experience of political and military domination. As for modern colonialism, it is described as the process of settlement and European political domination over the rest of the world between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries (Meneses 2018). For the epistemologies of the South, the independence of the colonies did not mean the end of colonialism. It only meant that it underwent mutations. The  other exercise is patriarchy. In  colonial contexts, colonialism and patriarchy often operate together. The  cognitive experience of the world is extremely diversified, but the absolute priority granted to modern science led to the destruction (massive epistemicide) of rival knowledges, seen as non-scientific (Santos 2018a). As Gayatri Spivak emphasizes, by ignoring the impact of the international division of labor in discourse and by making ideology invisible, poststructuralist analyses have participated in an economy of representation that has kept the non-European other in the shadow of the Eurocentric “I,” enabling the universal subject to remain hostage to Eurocentrism (1988: 280). For a more detailed analysis of the constitution of the Third World and the different social transformation and political emancipation projects concerning this time-space, see Stavrianos (1981), Escobar (1995), Berger (2004), Foran (2005), and Amin (2014). This  topic is beyond the scope of this Introduction. On this subject, see Doran (2002), Duara (2004), James (2012), Falola and Essien (2014), and Weber (2018). The end of World War II was a key moment in the process of decolonization; since the UN was created in 1945, over 80 former colonies have gained their independence (retrieved June 2018 from www.un.org/en/decolonization). The Bandung Conference gathered 29 delegates from Asian and African countries with the aim of creating bonds for economic and cultural cooperation among the countries of the South as a way to overcome the risks inherent in new forms of colonialism (Meneses 2017: 61–62). The reference model was the third state during the French Revolution, a reference to the “wretched,” those who did not belong to the aristocracy or clergy. These “wretched” were identified by Sauvy as those who would eventually rise and fight for a different world, a better world.

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19 See, among others, Rodney (1973), Wallerstein (1974), Amin (1974a), Mitra (1977), and Escobar (1995). 20 The  abyssal line that separates the global capitalist system presents it as being made up of two sets of states, variously described as center/periphery, dominant/ dependent, or metropolis/colony. 21 Seeking to explain the ongoing presence of colonialism after historical colonialism had ended in Latin America, Quijano put forward the concept of “coloniality,” which has become a fundamental milestone in the decolonial project. 22 This idea of the South is also analyzed by Gramsci as he problematizes the situation of internal colonialism experienced in Italy. In 1926, he identified the “Southern Question” as the set of power relations between northern and southern Italy. In his view, capitalism and colonialism were combined in Italy, in a context where “the Northern bourgeoisie has subjugated the South of Italy and the Islands, and reduced them to exploitable colonies” (Gramsci 2000: 171). 23 BRICS is an acronym for a group of five countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) forming a political economic cooperation group. 24 For  the Comaroffs (2012a), China is simultaneously North and South, deriving huge benefits from this position by playing in the interstices of these two worlds while fully identifying as part of the East. China represents a specific form of capitalism capable of acting North and South from a peripheral position. 25 This proposal converges with Walter Mignolo’s. For him, the point of origin of the epistemic shift is “the Third World, in its diversity of local histories and different times and Western imperial countries that first interfered with those local histories. To think from the borders is the epistemic singularity of any decolonial project” (2013: 131), the epistemic singularity that characterizes the global South.

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Part I

Unveiling the Eurocentric Roots of Modern Knowledge

1 GLOBAL SOCIAL THOUGHT VIA THE HAITIAN REVOLUTION Gurminder K. Bhambra1

Introduction In  recent years, sociology—along with many other disciplines—has gone through a “global turn.” This focus on “the global” has been seen as a way in which sociology can redress a previous neglect of those represented as “other” in its construction of modernity. The most common form of engagement is to call for additional accounts of events, processes, and thinkers to supplement the already existing narratives, both of canonical texts and historical events. On such understandings, “the global” and “global sociology” are presented as descriptors of the present and a call for sociology to be different in the future. Ulrich Beck’s (2000) argument for a cosmopolitan social science, for example, challenges what he presents as its standard methodological nationalism. Instead, he argues for the need to take “world society” as the starting point of sociological and other research. His “world society,” however, is one in which the historically inherited inequalities arising from the legacies of European colonialism and slavery play no part. Beck (2002) argues that he is not  interested in the memory of the global past, but simply in how a vision of a cosmopolitan future could have an impact on the politics of the present. This, as I have argued at greater length elsewhere, is disingenuous at best (Bhambra 2014). Any theory that seeks to address the question of “how we live in the world” cannot treat as irrelevant the historical construction of that world (Trouillot 1995). In this chapter, I take issue with the claims of global sociology more generally and examine the implications, precisely, of taking seriously the historical construction of the world in our theoretical conceptualizations. In contrast to the approach of Beck and others, I ask how sociological thought could be differently conceptualized if we took seriously global historical interconnections. I focus

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on a particular example, that of the Haitian Revolution, to see what can be learnt, both from its omission from accounts of events claimed to be of “world historical” significance, and from how theory would need to be re-thought once we took other such events seriously. What is at stake in such rethinking is what Santos (2014) has called “cognitive injustices,” and I shall argue how these might be redressed through an approach I call “connected sociologies” (Bhambra 2014).

A Critique of the “Global” Sociology Calls for a “global sociology” began to gather momentum from the start of the twenty-first century. There was an earlier argument by Akiwowo (1988, 1999), among others, for the “indigenization” of social science, which was taken up by Alatas (2001, 2006) and Sinha (2003) for an “autonomous” social science. These have been complemented by arguments for Southern theory by Connell (2007, 2010), for diverse sociologies by Patel (2010a, 2010b), and global sociology from below by Burawoy (2010a, 2010b). These arguments go beyond recognizing the significance of “the global” as a topic or theme within sociology—as Beck proposed—and argue instead for sociology to recognize its multiple and globally diverse origins; that is, to consider what a properly conceptualized global sociology might look like and how it might better serve the global futures towards which we are seen to be headed.2 Alatas (2006), for example, has argued for sociology to acknowledge the importance of civilizational contexts for the development of autonomous, or alternative, social science traditions. More generally, he has criticized “the lack of a multicultural approach in sociology” (2006: 5). Autonomous traditions, he argues, need to be “informed by local/regional historical experiences and cultural practices” as well as by alternative “philosophies, epistemologies, histories, and the arts” (2001: 59). This is because the autonomy of the different traditions, in his view, rests on historical (and other) phenomena believed to be unique to particular areas or societies. In this context, Western social science becomes a reference point for the divergence (or creativity, as expressed through the appropriation of Western traditions read through local contexts) of other autonomous traditions. There is little discussion, however, of what the purchase of these autonomous traditions would be for a global sociology, beyond a simple multiplicity of sociological “cultures.” In  this respect, the approach is similar to that of “multiple modernities” which emerged in Western sociology (Eisenstadt 2000; Eisenstadt and Schluchter 1998). In  part, it was a response to the unexpected fall of communism in Europe and a belief in the idea that, as Fukuyama (1992) argued, the “West” had “won.” Even for Fukuyama, however, the question emerged that, if this was the case, then why was “the West” just a universal model and not universally in existence across all societies in the world. It was in the attempt

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to explain both the seeming triumph of liberal capitalism and the continuing diversity and heterogeneity of existing societies that led to the reformulation of modernization theory as multiple modernities.3 Multiplicity, or simple pluralization, as has been argued by Dirlik (2003), serves to contain challenges to the dominant understanding. It does not involve a reconstruction of that understanding based on deficiencies associated with an earlier neglect of other experiences of modernity. This can be the case even when theorists seek explicitly to challenge the mono-civilizational accounts of standard definitions.4 In  developing their approach, theorists of multiple modernities addressed criticisms emerging from non-Western sociologies and argued that two main fallacies needed to be addressed. The first, advanced against earlier modernization theory, is the claim that there is only one form of (Western) modernization. The  second is advanced against critiques made by theorists of underdevelopment and dependency and suggests that looking from the West to the East was not necessarily a form of Orientalism or Eurocentrism. While it was accepted that the particular historical trajectories and experiences of societies beyond the West needed to be taken into consideration in discussing the subsequent developments of modernity, the originary form of modernity was still nonetheless believed to be a uniquely European phenomenon. The focus of multiple modernities, then, was on the recognition of divergent paths and of the diversity of modern societies, not any reconsideration of what (European) modernity had been understood to be and its developmental path. This acceptance of plurality and diversity was believed to protect theories of multiple modernities against charges of ethnocentrism or the inappropriate privileging of some histories over others. However, as Dirlik has argued, while the idea of multiple modernities concedes “the possibility of culturally different ways of being modern” (2003: 285), it does so without contesting what it is to be modern and without drawing attention to the social and historical interconnections in which modernity has been constituted and developed.5 This  is because they continue to accept standard historical narratives of modernity, narratives that are contested in the discipline from which they are derived. Thus, the central sociological account locates the emergence of modernity in a supposed “Age of Revolutions” spanning the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries that bore witness to the American Declaration of Independence and the French and Industrial Revolutions, a periodization popularized by Hobsbawm (2003). While these events are not the only ones to have merited consideration, they are the most frequently cited events, and they establish a particular idea of modernity, its initiation, and its expansion.6 The Industrial Revolution, for example, is understood to be a European phenomenon that was subsequently diffused globally. However, if we take the cotton factories of Manchester and Lancaster as emblematic of this revolution, then we see that cotton was not a plant that was native to England, let alone to the West (Washbrook 1997). It came from India, as did the technology of how

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to dye and weave it. It was grown in the plantations of the Caribbean and the Southern United States by enslaved Africans who were transported there as part of the European trade in human beings. The export of the textile itself relied upon the destruction of the local production of cotton goods in other parts of the world, not simply through price competition, but also through direct suppression. Zimmerman (2010), for example, documents how cotton production in West Africa was suppressed and undermined in favor of cotton from the USA. In this way, we see that industrialization was not solely a European or Western phenomenon, but one that had global conditions for its very emergence and articulation (Beckert 2015). The history of modernity as commonly told, however, rests, as Homi Bhabha argues, on “the writing out of the colonial and postcolonial moment” (1994: 250; see also Chakrabarty 2000). The rest of the world is assumed to be external to the world-historical processes selected for consideration and, concretely, colonial connections significant to the processes under discussion are erased, or rendered silent. Braudel’s three volume study of Civilization and Capitalism is a prime example of this. While he points to the importance of global connections to what is presented as Europe’s Industrial Revolution, nowhere in the volumes does he empirically address the substance of those connections, that is, imperialism, enslavement, dispossession, and colonialism. Instead, he talks about “the discovery of America” (1985: 388), slavery as part of the solution to a “problem” of a shortage of labor in the Americas, “India’s self-inflicted conquest” (1985: 489), and so on. The failure to offer a systematic account of phenomena claimed to be European, but demonstrated to be global, I suggest, is not an error of individual scholarship, it is something that is made possible by the very disciplinary structure of knowledge production that separates the modern (sociology) from the traditional and colonial (anthropology) and a “selection bias” in the engagement with available historiographies. The consequence is that no space is left for consideration of what could be termed, the “colonial and postcolonial modern,” that is, an understanding of the modern in terms of the global conditions of its emergence.7 Scholars who have taken on this challenge, such as Anibal Quijano and Walter Mignolo, have very pointedly argued for “modernity” to be understood as “modernity/coloniality” to highlight the inextricable association between them. The  modernity that Europe takes as the context for its own being, as Quijano (2007) argues, is so deeply imbricated in the structures of European colonial domination over the rest of the world that it is impossible to separate the two. Mignolo (2007) further elaborates this distinction in the context of the work of epistemic decolonization necessary to undo the damage wrought by both modernity and by understanding modernity/coloniality only as modernity. By silencing the colonial past within the historical narratives of modernity that are central to the formation of sociology, the discipline itself is called into question. As such, Santos (2014) calls for an “epistemology of

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the South” that, in acknowledging the distortions created in the production of knowledge by colonialism, would enable the retrieval of different ways of knowing. In  particular, Santos (2007) points to the system of visible and invisible distinctions that structure both social thought and social reality. He  argues that those events and processes that are standardly acknowledged—that is, are visible—within understandings of modernity are also constituted by events and processes “on the other side of the line” that are not deemed to be significant for such understandings—that is, they are invisible. This form of thinking legitimates particular inequalities, according to Santos, and their address requires us to move beyond “abyssal” thinking to take into account those aspects that have thus far been silenced. As suggested earlier, the standard accounts of modernity typically acknowledge events within Europe and the USA and ignore consideration both of the global contexts of the emergence of these events and also ignore events beyond these particular geographical sites. Most discussions of the political revolutions seem to be constitutive of the modern world, for example, center on the American and French Revolutions. The  Haitian Revolution is rarely considered alongside them despite occurring at around the same time. The  contestation and reconfiguration of our understandings of modernity, through the examination of other historical sites, points also to the possibility of a different politics for the present as the following sections will discuss.

Democratizing Revolutionary Narratives In this section, I will begin to deconstruct the idea of what Palmer (1959) calls “the age of democratic revolution” by placing the Haitian Revolution alongside its two primary exemplars, the American Declaration of Independence and the French Revolution. Palmer argues that while there were a great number of differences between the two latter revolutions, they nonetheless shared a good deal in common. The key commonality was that the revolutions were essentially “democratic,” which was understood in the broadest terms, and, as such, defined the “Atlantic civilization” of which they were a part. “Democratic,” in Palmer’s terms, was used to signify “a new feeling for a kind of equality, or at least a discomfort with older forms of social stratification” (1959: 4). Further, “equality” in its political context signified a repudiation of the exercise of coercive authority by any individual or individuals over others. While many scholars today would question whether these revolutions were actually democratic on the basis of the definitions provided—citing the denial of the franchise to all but propertied white men, the dispossession and genocide of indigenous peoples, and the institution of slavery within the USA and the colonies claimed by France, among other aspects—few go on to re-examine the claims made in the context of taking

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these “anomalies” seriously. The “democratic revolution” did not simply fail to carry through its mandate against feudal remnants of privilege, but created new forms of privilege and coercion. Alongside the USA and France, the other countries that Palmer pointed to as sharing in the spirit of the democratic revolutions were, notably, “England, Ireland, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy” (1959: 5). The one democratic revolution within the Atlantic civilization that he misses out is the Haitian Revolution, a revolution against the enslavement that was coterminous with modernity for a significant proportion of the global population. This is, in part, a consequence of Palmer ending his study of the “original” democratic revolutions in 1799 and leaving all “non-Western” revolutions for the second volume of his study. “The eighteenth century,” he writes, “saw the Revolution of the Western world; the twentieth century, the Revolution of the non-Western” (1959: 13). Thus, as Armitage and Subrahmanyam point out, democratic revolution is presented by Palmer as “a gift from the North Atlantic world to other peoples who had apparently contributed nothing to its original emancipatory potential” (2010b: xvii). This  narrative of diffusion is a common one. From the work of Marx and Weber onwards, the modern world has been presented as coming into being as a consequence of the diffusion of ideas and practices whose origins are identified in Europe and the West. There is little discussion of the global conditions of phenomena claimed as “European,” as discussed in the context of industrialization and cotton above. Further, there is a lack of consideration of other events and processes that could also be understood as “world-historical.” Yet, the revolution in Saint-Domingue that brought into being the new state of Haiti, for example, occurred around the same time as the American and French Revolutions (Palmer’s periodization notwithstanding). However, it is rarely accorded a similar status, that is, of being a foundational event of world history that brings into being the modern world. While there have been significant accounts of the Haitian revolution—most notably, perhaps, C. L. R. James’s (1989) The Black Jacobins—, few histories of the general “Age of Revolutions” variety have included it as part of their understanding of that age. As suggested above, Palmer only recognizes it as part of a subsequent wave that merely copied the originators of the North Atlantic, and Hobsbawm (2003) scarcely mentions it either. Even avowedly “global” histories of the “birth of the modern world,” such as Christopher Bayly’s (2004) book of the same title or Jürgen Osterhammel’s (2014) Transformation of the World, devote considerably more attention to the standard historical narratives of modernity than examining other global phenomena and, more significantly, reconsidering their accounts of the global on that basis. In  Bayly’s (2004) analysis, for example, Haiti barely gets a couple of sentences in the book even though the cover presents a striking portrait of JeanBaptiste Belley. Belley was a Haitian revolutionary and, as a representative of

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Saint-Domingue, was part of the delegation that traveled to Paris to speak to the Constituent Assembly. A formerly enslaved person, Belley had bought his own liberty through his labor and argued persuasively and successfully (albeit, in retrospect, temporarily) for the abolition of slavery within the French empire (Dubois, 2005: 169–170). Thus, it was only as a consequence of a delegation travelling from Haiti to France that the clause abolishing slavery was included in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.8 The most radical political statement of the French Revolution, then, that is, the one with the greatest universal potential, came from Haiti. Yet, this event is not included in Bayly’s account of the birth of the modern world and, therefore, it leads to no reconsideration of the broader claims of European modernity that are otherwise being made and sustained. The dominant understandings of modernity that see it as formed in processes endogenous to Europe and abstracted from the entanglements of colonialism and Empire remain in place. Other events, to the extent that they are mentioned, simply add a descriptive embellishment to the standard narratives, but do not transform them. Osterhammel’s (2014) account of Haiti in The Transformation of the World is similarly brief and provides little by way of reconceptualization of the global. There are just over three pages of discussion of the revolution in its own terms (2014: 528–532) in a book of over a thousand pages. Whenever it is mentioned throughout the rest of the book, it is usually in terms of the implications of the revolution for France. As he writes, France lost many of its North American colonies in the late eighteenth century and “suffered a further sharp setback in 1804, when its economically most important colony, the sugar-producing Saint-Domingue portion of the Caribbean Island of Hispaniola, renamed itself Haiti and declared independence” (2014: 400). No mention here of the fact that the revolution was one carried out by enslaved Africans who had been taken to the island by Europeans as part of the trade in human beings. Nor any discussion of the global connections of the revolution that not only linked Haiti to France, but also to West Africa.9 Osterhammel later goes on to mention Haiti in the context of failed states where, as he writes, “neither its political institution building nor its socio-economic development had made much progress” (2014: 409) in the hundred years of its existence. There is no corresponding mention of the devastating 20-year economic blockade by France of the new nation which was only lifted in 1825 on the agreement to pay France compensation for its loss of “property.” Compensation was paid, that is, for the loss of “property” embodied in those human beings who had been enslaved and now  had the temerity to emancipate themselves. They, however, were not, in turn, to be compensated for their enslavement and dispossession.10 As Dubois (2005) argues, Haiti was punished for its revolution then and, it seems, scholars are still unwilling to acknowledge its import today.11 To the extent that the Haitian Revolution does get discussed within standard “Age of Revolutions” narratives, the debate often seems to pivot on the following

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question, as noted by Sala-Molins: “did Haiti make her revolution or did the French revolution spread to the colonies?” (2006: 122). Indeed, Osterhammel’s framing of the Haitian Revolution is that it “should be understood as a direct consequence of the revolution in France” (2014: 529). While such Francocentric historical accounts of the revolution may concede the uprising to Toussaint L’Ouverture’s leadership, they rarely acknowledge any other source of inspiration12; that is, as Sala-Molins (2006) highlights, the actions may have occurred in Haiti, but they are seen to have occurred as a consequence of ideas and influences from France and the European Enlightenment more generally. The  inescapable conclusion of such a trajectory of thought is that “[t]here was no Haitian Revolution: there was only a Saint-Domingue episode of the French Revolution” (Sala-Molins 2006: 123). However, as Sala-Molins argues, if Haiti’s Black liberators are going to be made disciples of the Enlightenment, “then logic requires that things be clarified: these liberators subverted the language of the Enlightenment and gave it a meaning it did not have” (2006: 124); moreover, they gave it a meaning that would subsequently be rescinded by the supposed initiators of Enlightenment. The  recent focus on Haiti within contemporary scholarship is due in no small part to the endeavors of scholars such as Trouillot (1995), Geggus (2002), Fischer (2004), Dubois (2004, 2005), and Buck-Morss (2009) among many others. Building on the seminal work of James (1989), they have retrieved and made accessible to wider audiences the histories of the Haitian Revolution. Before these accounts, in the nineteenth century, knowledge of the Haitian Revolution circulated extensively among communities in struggle. It  was significant to revolts of enslaved peoples in the USA  (Geggus 2001; Jackson and Bacon 2010), to the independence movements of Latin America and the Caribbean (Dubois 2004), to the cultural renaissance in Harlem and elsewhere ( Jackson 2008), to the Maori movements for justice and equality (Shilliam 2012), among many other such events. These broader, and earlier, resonances of Haiti suggest that the silence of the Haitian Revolution is a silence primarily in the academy where we have failed to take seriously the significance of the revolution and to learn anew from it. So, what might we learn about the birth of the modern world and its transformation (and the politics of knowledge production, more generally) if we took the Haitian revolution seriously? First, in terms of Haiti itself, we would learn about the ways in which those who had been enslaved, on achieving their freedom and independence, honored the people who preceded them on the land. In renaming Saint-Domingue as Haiti, they honored the name given to the island by the Taino Arawak people who were wiped out by Spanish and French colonization (Geggus 2002: 207–220). Second, we would learn that on achieving freedom and establishing the independence of Haiti, the working out of the Haitian Constitution was itself predicated on an understanding of citizenship that had greater universal applicability than similar notions developed in the French Revolution.

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According to Fischer (2004: 266), by making freedom from enslavement and racial discrimination the bedrock of political understandings and unlinking citizenship from race, the Haitian Constitution radicalized and universalized the idea of equality. At  the time that the revolutionary leaders were calling for “the immediate, universal abolition of slavery,” in the 1790s, there was no similar such call elsewhere in the Atlantic world (Nesbitt 2008: 13). In light of this, it is no wonder that Trouillot (1995) suggests that the Haitian Revolution was the most radical of its age and silenced, precisely, for its radical nature. As discussed above, it is the circumscribed accounts of the “North Atlantic” revolutions of the USA  and France that are understood as foundational for understanding the world historical significance of democracy, and its universal claims which form part of the sociological construction of the concept of modernity. Indeed, Osterhammel goes further to suggest that one reason for the relative silence about the Haitian Revolution is that “it seemed to emit no universalizable political message over and above a call for the liberation of slaves throughout the world” (2014: 531). This extraordinary political act, it should be noted, occurred as the American Revolution maintained enslavement and segregation of its populations and the French maintained forms of domination and exclusion with their colonies and over their colonized populations, with Napoleon reintroducing slavery in the French colonies in 1802. Despite the limited nature of these “democratic revolutions,” their appeal is seen by commentators such as Osterhammel and Bayly as universalizable, while the call for equality and freedom by the Haitian revolutionaries is not.

Omissions and Hierarchies The issue is not simply to rectify an omission by acknowledging its particular significance in its own terms—the implication of arguments for a sociological multiculturalism like that of Syed Farid Alatas (2006)—but to understand how that omission structures and distorts hegemonic accounts of European cultural “identity” and its “others” with significance for the present. Pierre Rosanvallon’s (2013) recent book, The  Society of Equals, mentions Santo Domingo (as the French colony is named by the translator) on page 16, alongside the USA and France, as one of the fundamental sites of the new spirit of equality that animated the revolution of modernity. It is then never returned to through the rest of its 384 pages. Instead, the discussion of equality—its historical conditions and contemporary political possibilities—is articulated through a discussion of selective episodes of US and French history. As such, Rosanvallon appears to believe that equality can be conceptualized through a discussion of US  and French history that, not  only fails to address issues of dispossession, appropriation, enslavement, and colonization as limits to the contemporary ideological understandings of equality, but also fails to consider these as perhaps the very negation of those understandings. In  the

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following section, I discuss the significance of the omission of the Haitian Revolution, both in its own terms and in terms of the implications of such omissions for social scientific considerations of “the global” through a reading of Rosanvallon (2013). The idea of the “society of equals” at the heart of Rosanvallon’s (2013) book concerns the forging of a world of like human beings, a society of autonomous individuals, and a community of citizens. What is needed, he argues, is a revised understanding of equality that starts from the position of singularity and distinction rather than a “homogenizing” universality. That is, he seeks to conceptualize equality from an acknowledgment of the many ways in which we, as individuals, are different, rather than by way of what we might share. Indeed, one of the poisons of equality, he suggests, is separatism—group identity in all its varieties—which undercuts the commonality constituted by a democratic equality of individuals and, paradoxically, can also derive from a universalistic imaginary. In this way, Rosanvallon moves from the idea of the universal to the idea of the individual and only addresses “group” identity implicitly in terms of its contemporary threat, as a form of separatism, to the “society of equals” he wishes to be established. However, he does not address how groups come to understand themselves as such and so naturalizes both the process of group formation and of understandings of membership within groups. Much as white males, for example, might have believed themselves to be neither gendered nor in possession of an ethnicity, but simply embodiments of a universal, so throughout the book, Rosanvallon works with a conception of the French nation that sees its population, historically, as constituted solely in terms of its white citizens. He does not mention the many debates over who was to be a citizen and how membership was to be claimed. Group identity is presented by him as a later disruption into a society of individuals, notwithstanding that such a society was constituted by exclusions of others on the basis of characteristics ascribed to them as members of groups. The Code Noir, for example, was established in the late seventeenth century to regulate the lives of the enslaved in the French Caribbean. It was extended in subsequent years to cover the conditions governing the lives of those within French colonies and those who had migrated from the colonies to the French national state (Riddell 1925; Stovall 2006). It  was, as Stovall (2006) argues, one of the first major examples of the conflict between political and legal equality and racial discrimination within the French state. Beyond this, however, it was also “the only comprehensive legislation which applied to the whole population, both black and white  […] affecting social, religious and property relationships between all classes” (Palmer 1996: 363). The decree applied to all within the imperial territories of the French state, including Saint-Domingue and Louisiana, and also governed the lives of those deemed other within the French national state. Notwithstanding the regulation of life inscribed within the Code Noir, there were many debates during the revolutionary period in France over whether

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black men could be citizens or whether color itself was a radical obstacle to civic and political equality. Many of these debates turned on the group characteristics ascribed to individuals. In  1791, for example, it was proposed that only “non-whites born of free parents, not freedmen” should be accorded political equality (Geggus 1989: 1303). This limited decree was passed in May of that year and overturned a couple of months later. Events in Saint-Domingue intensified over the summer as a consequence of this roll back and “the largest slave revolt in the history of the Americas” ensued (Geggus 1989: 1303). This put further pressure on “French legislators to concede full racial equality (1792) and eventually slave emancipation (1794)” (Geggus 1989: 1303). These tremendous achievements were not long-lasting, however, as both were overturned within a couple of years. Slavery was re-established within the French empire by Napoleon and citizenship re-confirmed as the preserve of white men (with property) (Brown 1922; Dubois 2000; Sala-Molins 2006). Nonetheless, the contestations are significant and point to more complex histories of citizenship and equality than those presented in Rosanvallon’s account. There is no discussion within Rosanvallon’s book of what implications the demand for inclusion by the delegation from Saint-Domingue had for understandings of being a French citizen. Initially, this delegation had sought simple inclusion and representation within the new revolutionary state. It  was only on being denied this that full independence was then sought and equality established on their own terms within the new state of Haiti.13 The failure to engage with the complex relationship between France and Haiti impoverishes Rosanvallon’s arguments. Ultimately, the failure to transcend racial categories (or their own group identity as white) that had white French citizens deny the claim for participation and representation being made by black appellants suggests that the idea of equality, in its dominant French articulation, was, and is, limited by race.14 This limitation is not just on the basis of effecting an exclusion, but also points to the relations of domination that were under challenge at the time. This tumultuous period offers up a moment of history in which arguments for universal (male) equality transcended, however fleetingly, the racial divisions that were otherwise being maintained. It is through consideration of the broader debates and arguments of this time that we could learn more about what it would take, truly, to create a “society of singular equals.” And, yet, Rosanvallon neglects to address this aspect of revolutionary French history, and its significance for the present. By not addressing this initial exclusionary moment (or then subsequent ones in the context of Algeria and other colonies claimed by France), Rosanvallon also cannot account for later demands made by those such as the Indigènes de la République.15 He understands them as separatist claims that would undercut a society of equals established on the democratic equality of all citizens understood as individuals. Indeed, Rosanvallon argues that the solidarities of immigrant communities are somehow in breach of the

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foundational equality of citizenship within the French nation. This, despite the fact that some of the people who claimed citizenship, as individuals, would have been denied it on the basis of ascribed membership to groups by those very citizens who understood themselves as “equals.” The repercussions of this in the present are profound.16 Rosanvallon’s implicit suggestion that national identity is itself not a “poison” of equality in the way that other group identities are presented as being normalizes and, more significantly, homogenizes “national” group identity. Further, the emergence of the nation is presented as an endogenous event and unconnected to broader processes of colonization, dispossession, and appropriation. In failing to locate the nation within these broader processes, all “others” are external to the nation as conceived by Rosanvallon. This is what enables him to normalize the group identity of the nation conceived in homogenous terms and to pathologize the group identities of multicultural immigrants and diverse others. Such a presentation enacts a variety of exclusions. For example, the conditions of diversity in the present are made anomalous in terms of the version of the past that is being put forward. This  is what enables him to make his argument that what is now needed is simply for us to treat each other equitably, as equals. However, this does not address the ways in which those identified as “other” were rarely treated as equals in the past and so effaces the question of restitution for past wrongs (that continue to structure present inequalities) as part of the process of how we might create a society of equals. Another way to put this is to suggest that what is happening is the misidentification of relations of domination as exclusion which then suggests that the remedy to the wrongs of the past is inclusion, not, more appropriately, an address of domination.17 Throughout the book, Rosanvallon equates equality with sameness or homogeneity of membership within a community. This, after all, is the way in which he is able to discuss equality in the round without any reference to the limiting historical instances of enslavement or colonization—those who were enslaved or colonized are not recognized as members of the communities under discussion. This sameness of community is linked to notions of citizenship and has disturbing connotations in terms of identifying those towards whom we might be obliged to act equitably. If the political community of France had been extended to include also the colonial possessions of France, then different understandings of equality may have been possible. This would have been further facilitated by taking the case of Haiti seriously. However, Haiti remains invisible “on the other side of the line” that Santos (2007) suggests bifurcates abyssal thinking and radically excludes all that is produced as non-existent. For Rosanvallon, taking Haiti seriously would have forced him to confront the fact that as Haitians fought for self-emancipation, they did so from that country otherwise presented as the fount of liberty and equality and brotherhood (or, more simply, modernity)—France. It is this that explains why Rosanvallon, while referencing Santo Domingo, cannot consider it further, because to do so

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with any seriousness would cause him to have to reflect on its implications for the whole theoretical edifice of his understanding of equality. It would require a radical reconstruction of the very idea of equality through the engagement with and development of traditions not usually presented as central within the academy. It  is significant that Rosanvallon (2013) uses the earlier Spanish name for the island—Santo Domingo (or, in the original French version, Saint-Domingue)— rather than that chosen by the self-emancipated citizens, Haiti. Even in its naming, Rosanvallon chooses to efface the momentous achievements of the Haitian Revolution and to defer consideration of how the ideas of equality that emerged in this revolution could contribute to, challenge, and inform contemporary understandings of equality and what it would take to create a society of equals.

Interconnected Sociologies Returning to questions of global sociology, it is perhaps clearer how discourses of modernity, claiming world-historicity, but presenting a truncated version of European history, are indeed parochial rather than global. Additionally, this points also to the deleterious impact on the development of concepts and categories, as evidenced by the discussion of Rosanvallon above, of taking parochial histories as global ones. The  world-historical events recognized in the constitution of modernity remain centered upon a narrowly defined European history and there is no place for the broader histories of colonialism or slavery in their understandings of the emergence of the modern or modern concepts. Further, the complex historical interconnections forged through colonial processes of domination and subordination are also subsumed within contemporary sociological thought. These histories—and the resistance to the modes of domination they illustrate—need to be taken as central to the development of the idea of the “global” within our disciplines. Why? Well, mostly because the global, empirically, is constructed through such processes. The perspective of “connected sociologies,” with which I conclude, starts from a recognition that events are constituted by processes that are always broader than the selections that bound events as particular and specific to their theoretical constructs. It  is inspired by the call, by historian Subrahmanyam (1997), for “connected histories.” “Connected sociologies”18 recognizes a plurality of possible interpretations and selections, not as a “description” of events and processes, but as an opportunity for reconsidering what we previously thought we had known. The different sociologies in need of connection are themselves located in time and space, including the time and space of colonialism, empire, and (post)colonialism. They will frequently arise as discordant and challenging voices and may even be resisted on that basis (a resistance made easier by the geo-spatial stratification of the academy). The  consequence of different perspectives must be to open up examination of events and processes such that they are understood differently in light of that engagement. Put another way,

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engaging with different voices must move us beyond simple pluralism to make a difference to what was initially thought; not so that we come to think the same, but that we think differently from how we had previously thought before our engagement.19 Much contemporary sociology and political thought sidesteps the issue of historical global interconnections—those connections argued for in the call to take seriously the Haitian Revolution as a world historical event. They often only regard as significant those connections that brought European modernity to other societies. Although, of course, they rarely address the actual historical processes of colonialism, enslavement, and dispossession that were involved in the making of such connections. Rather, these are euphemized under terms such as European contact or mere diffusion. In  this way, theorists continue to assert the necessary priority of the West in the construction of conceptual categories and end up privileging the same understanding of modernity and modern societies as earlier scholars. A  “connected sociologies” approach, in contrast, enables us to locate Europe within wider processes, address the ways in which Europe created and then benefitted from the legacies of colonialism and enslavement, and examine what Europe needs to learn from those it dispossessed in order to address the problems we currently face. “Connected sociologies” points to the work needed in common to make good on the promise of a reinvigorated sociological imagination in service of social justice in a global world.

Acknowledgments I would like to thank Boaventura de Sousa Santos and John Holmwood for their constructive critical engagement with this chapter across its various stages. I also thank Boaventura for the initial invitation to present an early version at the International Colloquium on Epistemologies of the South held in Coimbra in 2014. The chapter was shaped by conversations with colleagues participating in the Egalitarianisms seminar led by Danielle Allen at the Institute for Advanced Study. I appreciate the feedback received from colleagues, and our conversations over the year, and I hope that the revised chapter does justice to the comments and suggestions made.

Notes 1 University of Warwick. This  chapter was first published under the same title in the Journal of Intercultural Studies, 2016 (37: 1), pp. 1–16. It is reproduced here with permission. 2 For further discussion, see Bhambra (2014). 3 For further details on the sociological debates on modernization and the shift to multiple modernities, see Chapter 3 of my Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination (Bhambra 2007).

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4 See Göle (2000). 5 See Bhambra (2007, 2014). 6 For  a discussion of the “age of revolutions” within a broader geographical and temporal context, see, for example, Armitage and Subrahmanyam (2010a) and Blackburn (2011). 7 See also Dirlik (2005). 8 This fact is missed from many such accounts and even Hobsbawm (2003) attributes the abolition of slavery to the Jacobins of France rather than to the “Black Jacobins” of whom James (1989) wrote in 1938. 9 See Thornton (1993). 10 Compensation was set at 150 million Francs and, to put this into context it should be mentioned that, at around the same time, France sold the entire territory of Louisiana to the fledgling United States for 80 million Francs. Unable to pay the coerced indemnity, as Dubois argues, “the Haitian government took loans from French banks, entering a cycle of debt that would last into the twentieth century” (2005: 304). Osterhammel does mention the ‘exorbitant compensation’ about 400 pages later, but this is in the context of celebrating Charles X signing a “bilateral trade agreement with Haiti in 1825” thereby setting a European precedent “by recognizing the breakaway black republic” (2014: 844). In  the same sentence he discusses the “dispossessed French landowners,” but does not  mention that what they were dispossessed of was their claim to own other human beings. 11 See also Trouillot (1995). 12 Hobsbawm’s comments on the Haitian Revolution, for example, point only to the idea of French inspiration. First he suggests that the French “abolished slavery in the French colonies, in order to encourage the Negroes of San Domingo to fight for the Republic” (2003: 93) and, a few pages later, writes about “the movements of colonial liberation inspired by the French Revolution (as in San Domingo)” (2003: 115). 13 This parallels an argument made by Allen (2014) regarding the establishment of the USA. 14 See Geggus (1989). 15 See Grewal (2009). 16 See Vergès (2010). 17 See Allen (2005). 18 For a fuller elaboration of this argument see Bhambra (2014). 19 See Holmwood (2007).

References Akiwowo, Akinsola A. (1988), “Universalism and Indigenization in Sociological Theory: Introduction”, International Sociology, 3(2), 155–160. doi:10.1177/026858088003002003. Akiwowo, Akinsola A. (1999), “Indigenous Sociologies: Extending the Scope of the Argument”, International Sociology, 14(2), 115–138. doi:10.1177/0268580999014002001. Alatas, Syed Farid (2001), “Alternative Discourses in Southeast Asia”, Sari, 19, 49–67. Alatas, Syed Farid (2006), “Editorial Introduction: The  Idea of Autonomous Sociology  – Reflections on the State of the Discipline”, Current Sociology, 54(1), 5–6. doi:10.1177/0011392106058830. Allen, Danielle (2005), “Invisible Citizens: On Exclusion and Domination in Ralph Ellison and Hannah Arendt”, in Williams, Melissa and Macedo, Stephen (eds.), Nomos XLVI: Political Exclusion and Domination. New York: New York University Press. Allen, Danielle (2014), Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality. New York: Liveright.

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Armitage, David, and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay (eds.) (2010a), The Age of Revolutions in Global Context, c. 1760–1840. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Armitage, David, and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay (2010b), “Introduction: The  Age of Revolutions, c.1760–1840  – Global Causation, Connection, and Comparison”, in Armitage, David, and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay (eds.), The  Age of Revolutions in Global Context, c. 1760–1840. Basingstoke: Palgrave, xii–xxxii. Bayly, Christopher A. (2004), The Birth of the Modern World. Oxford: Blackwell. Beck, Ulrich (2000), “The  Cosmopolitan Perspective: Sociology of the Second Age of  Modernity”,  British Journal of Sociology, 51(1), 79–105. doi:10.1111/j.14684446.2000.00079.x. Beck, Ulrich (2002), “The Cosmopolitan Society and Its Enemies”, Theory Culture Society, 19(1–2), 17–44. doi:10.1177/026327640201900101. Beckert, Sven (2015), The Empire of Cotton: A Global History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Bhabha, Homi K. (1994), The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Bhambra, Gurminder K. (2007), Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Bhambra, Gurminder K. (2014), Connected Sociologies. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Blackburn, Robin (2011), The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights. London:Verso. Braudel, Fernand (1985), The Perspective of the World. Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century:Volume 3 (translated by Siân Reynolds). London: Fontana Press. Brown, George W. (1922), “The Origins of Abolition in Santo Domingo”, The Journal of Negro History, 7(4), 365–376. doi:10.2307/2713719. Buck-Morss, Susan (2009), Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Burawoy, Michael (2010a), “Facing an Unequal World: Challenges for a Global Sociology”, in Burawoy, Michael, Chang, Mau-kuei, and Hsieh, Michelle Fei-yu (eds.), Facing an Unequal World: Challenge for a Global Sociology. Taipei: Academica Sinica and International Sociological Association, 3–27. Burawoy, Michael (2010b), “Forging Global Sociology from Below”, in Patel, Sujata (ed.), The ISA Handbook of Diverse Sociological Traditions. London: Sage Publications, 52–65. Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2000), Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Connell, Raewyn (2007), Southern Theory: The  Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science. Cambridge: Polity Press. Connell, Raewyn (2010), “Learning from Each Other: Sociology on a World Scale”, in Sujata Patel (ed.), The  ISA  Handbook of Diverse Sociological Traditions. London: Sage Publications, 52–65. Dirlik, Arif (2003), “Global Modernity? Modernity in an Age of Global Capitalism”, European Journal of Social Theory, 6(3), 275–292. doi:10.1177/13684310030063001. Dirlik, Arif (2005), “The  End of Colonialism? The  Colonial Modern in the Making of Global Modernity”, boundary 2, 32(1), 1–31. doi:10.1215/01903659-32-1-1. Dubois, Laurent (2000),“La République Métissée: Citizenship, Colonialism, and the Borders of French History”, Cultural Studies, 14(1), 15–34. doi:10.1080/095023800334968. Dubois, Laurent (2004), A Colony of Citizens: Revolution & Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787–1804. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Dubois, Laurent (2005), Avengers of the New World: The  Story of the Haitian Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. (2000), “Multiple Modernities”, Daedalus, 129(1), 1–29.

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Eisenstadt, Shmuel N., and Schluchter,W. (1998),“Introduction: Paths to Early Modernities – A Comparative View”, Daedalus: Early Modernities, 127(3), 1–18. Fischer, Sibylle (2004), Modernity Disavowed: Haiti and the Cultures of Slavery in the Age of Revolution. Durham: Duke University Press. Fukuyama, Francis (1992), The End of History and the Last Man. New York: The Free Press. Geggus, David P. (1989), “Racial Equality, Slavery, and Colonial Secession during the Constituent Assembly”, American Historical Review, 94(5), 1290–1308. Geggus, David P. (ed.) (2001), The  Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. Geggus, David P. (2002), Haitian Revolutionary Studies. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Göle, Nilüfer (2000), “Snapshots of Islamic Modernities”, Daedalus, 129(1), 91–117. Grewal, Kiran (2009), “‘Va t’faire intégrer!’: The  Appel des Féministes Indigènes and the Challenge to ‘Republican Values’ in Postcolonial France”, Contemporary French Civilization, 33(2), 105–133. doi:10.3828/cfc.2009.18. Hobsbawm, E. J. (2003 [1962]), The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848. London: Abacus. Holmwood, John (2007), “Sociology as Public Discourse and Professional Practice: A  Critique of Michael Burawoy”, Sociological Theory, 25(1), 46–66. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9558.2007.00297.x. Jackson, Maurice (2008), “‘Friends of the Negro! Fly with me, The path is open to the sea’: Remembering the Haitian Revolution in the History, Music, and Culture of the African American People”, Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 6(1), 59–103. doi:10.1353/eam.2008.0001. Jackson, Maurice, and Bacon, Jacqueline (eds.) (2010), African Americans and the Haitian Revolution: Selected Essays and Historical Documents. New York: Routledge. James, C. L. R. (1989 [1938]), The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. New York:Vintage Books. Mignolo, Walter D. (2007), “Delinking: The  Rhetoric of Modernity, the Logic of Coloniality and the Grammar of De-coloniality”, Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 449–514. doi:10.1080/09502380601162647. Nesbitt, Nick (2008), Universal Emancipation: The  Haitian Revolution and the Radical Enlightenment. Charlottesville,VA: University of Virginia Press. Osterhammel, Jürgen (2014), The Transformation of the World:A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (translated by Patrick Camiller). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Palmer, R. R. (1959), The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760–1800. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Palmer, Vernon Valentine (1996), “The  Origins and Authors of the Code Noir”, Louisiana Law Review, 56(2), 363–407. Patel, Sujata (2010a), “Introduction: Diversities of Sociological Traditions”, in Patel, Sujata (ed.), The ISA Handbook of Diverse Sociological Traditions. London: Sage, 52–65. Patel, Sujata (2010b), “At  Crossroads: Sociology in India”, in Patel, Sujata (ed.), The ISA Handbook of Diverse Sociological Traditions. London: Sage, 280–291. Quijano,Aníbal (2007),“Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality”, Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 168–178. doi:10.1080/09502380601164353. Riddell, William Renwick (1925), “Le Code Noir”, The  Journal of Negro History, 10(3), 321–329. Rosanvallon, Pierre (2013), Society of Equals (translated by Arthur Goldhammer). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Sala-Molins, Louis (2006), Dark Side of the Light: Slavery and the French Enlightenment (translated and with an Introduction by John Conteh-Morgan). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2007), “Beyond Abyssal Thinking: From Global Lines to Ecologies of Knowledges”, Review, XXX(1), 45–89. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2014), Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Shilliam, Robbie (2012), “Civilization and the Poetics of Slavery”, Thesis Eleven: Critical Theory and Historical Sociology, 108(1), 97–116. doi:10.1177/0725513611433765. Sinha,Vineeta (2003), “Decentring Social Sciences in Practice Through Individual Acts and Choices”, Current Sociology, 51(1), 7–26. doi:10.1177/0011392103051001778. Stovall, Tyler (2006), “Race and the Making of the Nation: Blacks in Modern France”, in Gomez, Michael A. (ed.), Diasporic Africa: A Reader. New York: New York University Press, 200–218. Subrahmanyam, Sanjay (1997), “Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia”, Modern Asian Studies, 31(3), 735–762. Thornton, John K. (1993), “‘I am the Subject of the King of Congo’: African Political Ideology and the Haitian Revolution”, Journal of World History, 4(2), 181–214. Trouillot, Michel-Rolph (1995), Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon Press. Vergès, Françoise (2010), “‘There Are No Blacks in France’: Fanonian Discourse, ‘the Dark Night of Slavery’ and the French Civilizing Mission Reconsidered”, Theory Culture Society, 27(7–8), 91–111. doi:10.1177/0263276410383715. Washbrook, David A. (1997), “From Comparative Sociology to Global History: Britain and India in the Pre-history of Modernity”, Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient, 40(4), 410–443. Zimmerman, Andrew (2010), Alabama in Africa: Booker T.Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

2 MAKING THE NATION HABITABLE* Shahid Amin

Introduction: Tendencies in the Discourses about Nation and Nationalism The last 30 years have seen a rise in the ways in which persons of Indian origin now residents in “the West” have sought to impact the life of the Indian nation-state. No wonder, social theorists have begun to pay attention, of late, to the heavy traffic in identity—and—political concerns that are clearly transnational in character. Commentators have even referred, in a light-hearted vein, to the Madison Square Garden phenomenon, i.e., the exuberant display of “long-distance nationalism” enacted in New York on the occasion of a recent official visit of the Indian Prime Minister to the USA. Its latest manifestation is the brouhaha about a propre, if not anodyne, portrayal of the iniquitous “caste system” of India in California state school textbooks.1 Two interrelated factors seem to have contributed to this rise of nationalism of Indians not normally resident in India: large-scale white collar migration constitutes the physical body; avenues of instant communication are the collateral arteries through which these affects, dispositions, and purposive actions circulate from other parts of the world to the physically situated nation space between the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal. Concomitantly, South Asian states seek to attract first-generation émigrés largely, and their investments, for the greater good of the * This essay has had a long gestation history. An earlier version was written at the invitation of Peter Ronald deSouza for an international conference, “Goa: 1961 and Beyond,” held at Goa University in late 2011. I am grateful to Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Maria Paula Meneses for our conversation at that conference and in the years since. I am also grateful to Homi Bhabha for giving me an opportunity to try out some of my ideas at a talk at the Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard University, in April 2016.

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mother country.Trans-national organizations, tied to particular social and political formations “back home” act in a sense as extensions of the body-politic, seeking in turn to affect its shape—the democratic process, even the common sense—in Raymond William’s phrase, “the structure of feeling”—in these countries. One could well argue that these are trans-national effects to make particular countries better places for those permanently resident in these sub-tropical nation states. In a word: Make these more habitable for the locals. I leave it to theorists such as Appadurai (1996) and Chatterjee (1997) to debate the finer points and byways of these tendencies. Instead, I shall begin by etching some of the issues that form the backdrop of my argument in this essay. In  his article “The  Smallness Thrust Upon Us,” Amartya Sen cites a telling passage: “Any kiddie in school can love like a fool,” Ogden Nash had proclaimed. “But hating, my boy, is an art […].” That art is widely practiced by skilled artists and instigators, and the weapon of choice is identity” (2015: 46). Were we to substitute the term “identity” with “history,” a fair amount of the view about “our past”—not the plural “our pasts”—in the quest for the New Indian National will emerge into sharper focus. I am referring to the increasing stridency in the discourse about nation and nationalism in India, but it applies in equal measure to Pakistan and Bangladesh. This  has had the unfortunate effect of sacrificing those citizens who embody cultural diversity and difference at the altar of majoritarian certitude, i.e., the ways and mores, as currently defined, of the majority Hindu community.

The Rise of the Political Hinduism In  this chapter, I try to lay out the contours of the rise of majoritarian politics-cum common sense, especially in India, in the last 3 decades or so. Space does not  permit a fuller consideration of the “historical roots” and conjunctural specificities of the rise of political Hinduism, or “Hindutva,” as it is termed by its votaries. I shall begin instead by alluding to the “historical roots” and implications of this development for the idea of plurality and diversity which is encoded in the Indian Constitution. A constitution that was debated and drawn up between 1947 and 1949, when in the manner of “buy one get one free,” independence came packaged with the partition of the country. That partition of the Indian landmass into the two independent states of India and Pakistan (virtually along religious lines) resulted in mayhem, mass migration, and what has subsequently come to be termed “ethnic cleansing.” This overture to a fractured independence—the arrival of a “dusky dawn” in the words of poet Faiz—would take us straight to the “Islam question” in India’s medieval history, and to the place of its inheritors, the Muslims of India, in the social and political life of a truncated post-colonial nation-state: a land of diverse peoples, or one requiring straight-jacketing and homogenization.

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I shall then engage briefly with the trope of “syncretism” in the religio-social lives of its people in the heydays of medieval sultans and the Great Mughals (c. 1200–1800 Common Era [CE]) till the present. My plea would be not to elide the conflicts, the issue of conquest, leaving its narration—indeed the drawing up of “historical lessons”—to a narrowly construed sectarian construction of the past. Where, as the Columbia “Pakistani historian” Manan Ahmed Asif has noted, we “tend to see all pasts through [the] creedal difference” (2016: 4) of Hindus and Muslims, what “new[er] histories of collective pasts” can be essayed, in order to propel alternative epistemologies of South Asia beyond the bubble-wrapped orbits of newly resurgent Indian-“Hindu” or Pakistani“Muslim” common sense? For my part, I shall be making a plea for newer histories of conflict, conquest, and sectarian strife as belonging to the life history of the Indian—not falling outside it. My purpose in advocating (and writing in my own small way) such histories is to make the nation a better and more fulfilling place—in a word, more habitable for its varied denizens. The  online Oxford English Dictionary defines “denizen” as “a person, animal, or plant that lives or is found in a particular place.” An exemplary usage goes as follows: “I’d like to take you on a little journey through my backyard here in Ithaca to meet some plant denizens I spend much of my time admiring.”

So Permit Me 2 The  notion of belonging—belonging to a present nation-state—involves a replication of a sense of them and us through icons, stories, and narratives. The  siring of communities and narratives about long-existent collectivities often take place simultaneously. And they have a duplex (and duplicitous) claim to history and to particularistic remembrances of times past. There has developed in India, especially since the mid-1980s, a powerful current that pulls all public discourse into “That may be your history, but this is my/our past.” Extant histories of the Indian landmass, written under the discursive and institutional tutelage of the West, such a view now insists even more stridently than before, do not answer to our present “nationalist” needs. Rather than simply confronting pasts, ingenious or disingenuous with definitive, historical records, historiography, I argue, must make room for the ways pasts are remembered and retailed. I use the word “retail” in both its primary and secondary senses, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary: (i)  “the sale of goods in relatively small quantities to the public” and (ii) “recount, relate details of.” I shall argue further that we need to unravel the relationship of such pasts to the sense of a perceived—and now strident sense of belonging. As a practicing historian, one must then pose afresh the relationship between memory and history, the oral and the written, the transmitted and the inscribed, stereotypicality and lived history.

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Forgive me for offering a crash-course in Indian history of the past millennium to underline what has been at stake in constructing a view of India’s medieval past. Ruled by Muslim kings of different dynasties, the Sultanate of Delhi c. 1200 expanded over the next three centuries to encompass large parts of northern and peninsular India. And when it got snuffed out in the 1520s by an adventurer from the petty principality of Farghana in presentday Uzbekistan, the Delhi Kingdom was replaced by the more glamorous Mughal Empire, which lasted as an expanding imperial venture till the early eighteenth century, and nominally till the suppression of the Great Rebellion of 1857 against the colonial regime of the East India Company. It was then that the last of the Mughals was exiled by the triumphant British to oblivion in distant Rangoon. In the exercise of imperial hegemony and sub-continental power, the Mughals totally transformed the predatory meaning of the term Mongol/Mughal, reconfiguring in the process (in active interaction with the indigenous/local/“Hindu” elites) a wide swathe of the social, cultural, and intellectual world of India. This longue dureé of medieval “Muslim” (conquest and) rule, c. 1000–1200 CE onwards, has understandably been the object of considerable narrative anxiety from the nineteenth century to the present. And for good reason, for at its heart is the issue of the pre-colonial conquest of the sub-continent—and of its consequences. How different was this medieval-“Muslim India” of Turkish sultans and Mughal Padshahs from the conquest and colonization of India by a mercantile and then industrial Britain? Here, most accounts have been unable to extricate themselves from the blame/praise format—and a good deal of this has to do with the tie-up between history writing and nation-formation. For  a large part, historian’s history usually relates to one form of community—the national community. Modern history invokes the idea of a people as sovereign and historically constituted, and this has been productive of most national histories. The triumph of the idea of self-determination has meant that all conquest has come to be regarded as unjust. How can historian’s history then re-engage in newer ways the issue of conquest—in our case, the Turkish conquest of north India, c. 1000–1200 and imperial Mughal presence and pax Mughalia of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? The  politics of the imagination of “Hindu India” has depended crucially on a particular reading of the oppression of the disunited denizens of India by Muslim conquerors and rulers from the eleventh century until the establishment of British rule in the mid-eighteenth century. Partha Chatterjee has called this the perspective of the “new nationalist history of India” written in Bengali in the late nineteenth century. These vernacular histories transmitted the stereotypical figure of “the Muslim,” endowed with a “national character”: fanatical, bigoted, warlike, dissolute, cruel (Chatterjee 1994: 76–116).

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There  is enough evidence, though, to suggest that the categories Hindus and Muslims have been deployed contextually for quite some time. “Hindus” and “Muslims” were not  exclusivist identities, marking, shaping, and bounding each and every aspect of a person’s quotidian being and consciousness. There  is a growing body of literature which shows how notions of place [mohalla (quarters often peopled by specific caste or community groups), qasba (small urban center), ilaqa (locality), and jawar (sub-region)], hierarchies of caste, status, and purity, gradations of occupation, calling, and work, affiliation to sects, devotion to powerful deified dead, partaking of a common speech, sharing of a literate and popular culture—all these went into the making of real-life individuals, families, and groups with a multi-layered sense of the self. 3 Diametrically opposite to this is the case of communal or inter-religious “riots” where the blurring of boundaries of the everyday is violently denied to individuals, who are killed, raped, or burnt as representatives of a marked community. Between these two extremes—the fluidities of boundaries in the everyday, and the horrific carving out of the bodies of the victims of riots, most notably in the western state of Gujarat in 2002, there is the historicist position that suggests that over a large stretch of the Gangetic plains (and in parts of central India), the forging of the link of language-community-nation in the heyday of Victorian colonialism led to a hardening of religious-based community identities among the city-based Hindu groupings. Expressed in the newly developing modern vernaculars, specially of Hindi in northern and central India (and Marathi in the Bombay region), the angst of living in a colonial, “Oppressive Present” lead to the carving of particularistic linguistic and cultural spaces where a uniformly “Hindu” memory of Muslim conquest, oppression, despoliation, lasciviousness, forcible conversion, etc., were inscribed in literary and historical Hindi prose, with often a thin line distinguishing the two.4 “Jin javanan tuv dharam nari dhan tinhon linhaun” [You javanan: Muslim-foreigners] [from Ionian or Greeks subsequent to Alexander’s fourth century BCE invasion]! You have robbed us  [Hindus] of  [our] dharma, women and wealth,” wrote the north Indian Hindi poet Bhartendu Harishchandra in 1888, echoing the stereotypical recollection of Muslim conquest of eleventh to twelfth century and its effect on a Hindu India.5 Implied in this memorable couplet by one of the founders of modern Hindi is the conflation of the foreigner-Turk conquerors of north India with the entire population of Muslims in India. As a major study of the Hindi public sphere has suggested: the “uncriticized” gap between  [Hindu] samskara (received way of being) and nationalist ideology in the first three decades of the twentieth century may have enabled many a “Hindi nationalist,” like Manan Dwivedi or the rashtra-kavi or “national poet” Maithali Sharan Gupta, “to subscribe later to a secular, broad-minded ideology while retaining a sense of identity and history based on exclusive and unquestioned notion of Hindu subjecthood” (Orsini 2002: 196–197).6

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Fabricating Consensus Given that this conquest was historicized by colonial administrator-historians almost exclusively in terms of the “crescentade of Islam”/the experience of defeat of Hindus, is it not better to highlight India’s syncretism, the religious and cultural crossings between India’s Hindus and Muslims from medieval times to the present? This seems to have been the consensus among mainstream historians in late-colonial and post-independence India. The  most powerful (and very nearly the first) such response came from Professor Mohammad Habib, of Aligarh Muslim University, who, in a series of essays between 1931 and 1952, sought to counter the communalization of India’s medieval history (sectarian, communitarian, or more pointedly religious ordering of chronicled and lived elite and subaltern pasts) from a broadly Marxist perspective (Habib 1974: 3–122). Habib’s ire was directed particularly against the partisan-political scholarship of British administrator-“orientalists” who had projected the “Muslim India” of c. 1000–1700 CE as a period of consistent oppression and fanaticism from which colonial rule had at last liberated (Hindu) India by the establishment of British Raj in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Habib countered by arguing that the “real motives of the plundering expeditions” (1974: 21) associated with the name of the notorious despoiler of northern India, Mahmud of Ghazni from present-day Afghanistan, “was greed for treasure and gold. The iconoclastic pretensions were meant only for the applause of the gallery” (Habib: 116). The Muslims of India were not so much the progeny of Turkic conquerors, he wrote, as local converts from the artisanal classes, socially and spatially at the margins of both Hindu society and early medieval towns. More important for Habib, “such limited success as Islam achieved in India [as a proselytizing force] was not  due to its kings and politicians but to its saints” (1974: 22–23). For Mohammad Habib, one of the founders of a “scientific history” of medieval India, syncretism was an engrained characteristic of the land marked by a shared cultural space. Habib’s efforts were to blunt the “sword of Islam” motif in the construction of the Indian past in both the colonial and the immediately post-colonial present. To trace Indian history as a sort of religious genealogy of India’s present-day Muslims, he argued, was to do both the nation and its largest minority a grievous historical wrong. For some intellectuals, one contemporary response when faced with the resurgence of religious imaginings of historical pasts is to re-emphasize India’s vaunted syncretism, plucking at the strains of the demotic poetry of a fourteenth century weaver-saint-poet Kabir or the structured khayals of our classical Hindustani vocalists, whose musical habitations soared well above foundational divides. Such a view was put most eloquently by Amartya Sen in a pained and impassioned article published in the New York Review of Books, a few months after the

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destruction in December 1992 of a medieval mosque in Ayodhya, north India, and widespread Hindu-Muslim rioting, in which Muslims were the majority of the 2000 killed, a large number in the cosmopolitan city of Bombay (now Mumbai). It  is hard to find any basis in Indian literature and culture for a “two nations” view of Hindus and Muslims. The  heritage of contemporary India combines Islamic influences with Hindu and other traditions, as can easily be seen in literature, music, painting, architecture, and many other fields. The point is not simply that so many major contributions to Indian culture have come from Islamic writers, musicians, and painters, but also that their works are thoroughly integrated with those of Hindus. Indeed, even Hindu religious beliefs and practices have been substantially influenced by contact with Islamic ideas and values. (Sen 1993: 315) Looking at the underpinnings of these remarks, it is clear that Amartya Sen is here echoing some of the tropes that have gone into the political constitution of Indian secularism—and this at the moment of the reconfiguration of the two major religious communities, Hindus and Muslims, and the creation of a separate state of Pakistan, which despite mass exodus and killings left a very substantial Muslim minority within the newly constituted Indian nation-state. So, political secularism in the Indian case—as Bhargava (2011) has argued—did not involve, as in the West, incorporating or engaging with a religious minority in an otherwise homogenous western European society after the fact. It was constitutive of the Indian nation-state, with minority rights in the sphere of religious, educational, and familial matters placed on the same footing as the right to life and universal adult franchise. But complications remained: not only was there a sizeable Muslim minority in India which could be impacted upon and in turn influence the arithmetic of electoral politics and hence the life of democracy, a sizeable chunk of Indian history was characterized in turn by entanglement, imbrications—a specifically South Asian metissage of an Indo-Islamic presence with a Hindu-Indic one. This  history had its text-book versions—a good deal of it constructed for and taught in Indian schools from the mid-nineteenth century. And it operated with clear-cut categories: with a built-in contrast between soldiers and jihadi warriors deploying “the sword of Islam” and the rosary-fondling Sufis—pacifist, saintly proselytizers who ministered to the needs of a multireligious populace at large. Things on the ground were muddied—I prefer the term cluttered, with its imagery of a room full of furniture resistant to easy ordering. Where roles and allegiances were cluttered, cultural interaction, if seen solely through the prism of syncretism, could only feature as an anodyne management of differences in the past. But this is how text-book history worked, either of the syncretistic or the “innately conflictual” sort—Hindus and Muslims have mixed as little as a slick of

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oil in a pail of water. Syncretism, in the genealogy of our best, political conscious, secular historians—as with Professor Habib’s pronouncements c. 1930–1950— was the obverse of the shield of conquest and conflict; not a set of myriad dispositions, grounded local worldviews, and boundary-crossings after the fact, whose persistence through time was better suited to a structured engagement with the popular mind rather than to the certitudes of chronicled history, or its hubris. It is precisely such concerns that have animated one of India’s foremost political theorists (Partha Chatterjee) to enthuse historians to work towards “an analytic of the popular.” Chatterjee captures the disquiet among a new generation of Indian historians, post a resurgent political Hinduism, c. 1980s onwards: Nevertheless, in spite of  […] attempts within the University to defend the autonomy of the discipline on the old basis – while outside, in the domain of politics, the campaign of the Hindu right waxed and waned through the decade of the 1990s  – one important stream of awareness seemed to emerge among a new generation of historians […]. What was perhaps required was a redefinition of the discipline – not, as before, by excluding popular practices of memory from its list of approved practices, but rather by incorporating within itself an appropriate analytic of the popular. (2002: 18–19) Chatterjee characterizes the new writings, gathered together in History and the Present, as motivated by a “desire to find a way out of the self-constructed cage of scientific history that has made the historian so fearful of the popular, virtually immobilizing his or her in its presence” (2002: 15).

The Majoritarianism in India Since the mid-1980s, majoritarian politics has institutionalized itself by doing away with the qualifiers to the enumerative truism “India has a majority of Hindus.” Now it goes something like this: India has a majority of Hindus and the properly reconfigured Hindus have to be the subject of all subsequent sentences that follow, so to speak, from this originary sentence. Thus: India has a majority of Hindus who have to reconfigure the nation; and who have been misled into forgetting this basic fact; and who have been denied their prior due in the nation-state; and who have been at the receiving end of history for an entire millennium, from the beginning of Turkish invasions and conquest, c. 1000– 1200 CE, to the present. In a word, the replacement of a qualifying “but” by an insistent “and” changes a descriptive truism into a majoritarian battering ram. Earlier, the phrase “India has a majority of Hindus” was invariably followed by such caveats as…but it has historically been a land of diversity, where varied religious communities, despite differences and conflicts have lived almost harmoniously with their differences. This was the basis of the Nehruvian maxim

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of “Unity in Diversity” which was the reigning consensus from the framing of a republican constitution, after independence from colonial rule, in 1950 till the mid-1980s. It is obvious that such a move, marked by the substitution of an and for a but has enormous consequences for our view of our historical past, our contested present, and the vision of a multicultural Indian or a majoritarian “Hindu” future. I wish to offer a slightly different proposition in this essay. My plea is that we in India have to rake the past anew, if you will, so as to save the nation from a resurgent, electorally empowered majoritarianism. I wish to argue further that, faced with the majoritarian challenge in the present and the plea, both historical and commonsensical, for a “New Hindu History,” 7 what we need is not simply an emphasis on India’s composite culture. Of course we need that. But we also need something beyond the reiterations of sturdy certitudes. We need non-sectarian histories of sectarian strife, conflict, and conquest of the past. Let me add substance to this argument. It is well to remind ourselves, even at the risk of unsettling and redrawing the hard lines between Sufi saints and Jihadi-Ghazi-warriors, that our justly famous medieval Sufi masters, though gentle in their persona, especially in archetypal opposition to the “holy warriors” had to carve out forcefully their spiritual domain against the already existent authority of Hindu jogis. Hagiographies constantly harp on contests between the Sufi and the jogi for spiritual supremacy, contests in which the jogi is invariably worsted: he either converts, along with his disciples, or retires, leaving the Sufi in triumphant possession of a prior holy and tranquil spot (often by a lake). One of India’s most venerable Sufis, Muinuddin Chishti of Ajmer, is said to have established his khanqah (hospice) only after successfully overcoming ogres and warriors attached to a pre-existing site commanded by a jogi and his entourage (Digby 1970, 1986). Sometimes all that remains of the prepossessing jogi is a wisp of a name, carrying the toponymical stigma of a “historic” defeat for all to utter. Many place names in the Gangetic heartland enshrine the memory of such holy victories and defeats, though I am far from arguing that every time a local mentions, say, the name Maunathbhanjan, he or she necessarily recollects the destruction (bhanjan) of the lord and master (nath) of Mau, a thriving manufacturing town near Banaras since the seventeenth century. In other cases, the worsted spiritual master is transformed into an ogre by the sheer act of transcription from one language to another. While the Sanskrit dev stands for a god, or the title of a revered person, when written in Persian without this gloss the word deo stands for a ghost, demon, or monster. Spiritually and linguistically mastered, the holy-harmful figure  often submits before the majestic Sufi, who grants him the last wish of his subservience being recorded for posterity in terms of a trace, either in a place name or as a visible marker of a suitably monstrous sort. At the Bahraich shrine of Salar Masaud Ghazi in north-eastern Uttar Pradesh, the earrings of the subdued deo Nirmal are the size of grindstones.

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These are some of the ways in which eventful encounters between the holy men of Islam and of the Hindus get enshrined in the life histories of popular Sufi sites. And of course these shrines attract both Hindus and Muslims as devotees. Let me clarify. My point is not to deny the composite following of India’s justly famous Sufi saints. Muzaffar Alam, one of India’s foremost medievalists, has shown with great acuity how many such descriptions are subsequent representations, probably guided by the political necessity to overcompensate either a founding-head’s politically incorrect dealings with an earlier sultan, or to elevate him into a full-fledged Indian prophet (Nabi-yi-Hind), as the dominant Chishtiya silsilah (approximately “school”) faced threats in the seventeenth century from “new Central Asian sheikhs” (from the erstwhile homelands of the Mughals) and their Indian disciples (Alam 2004: 154–157, 164). All I wish to do is to create a space for encounter, clash, and conquest as necessary elements of the conflictual prehistory of such cultic sites as that of Muinuddin Chishti of Ajmer and Nizamuddin Auliya, medieval and modern Delhi’s greatest Sufi saint. Wrathful, hypostatical, miraculous events and encounters, I am suggesting, and not  a simple, longstanding Indian spirit of accommodation go into the making of the accounts of India’s vaunted syncretism. Or, to put it sharply: accommodation is predicated, necessarily in such stories, on a prior clash of two opposing wills. The hermetically cloistered figures of rosary-fondling Sufis (saints) and sabre-rattling ghazis (warriors), even when yoked to the cause of good pluralistic politics, produce bad history. Not history with a capital H, but the representation and recollection of their exploits, outside a proper, verifiable, contemporary medieval archive, which is the only account that historians can give of the life history of the legendary Muinuddin Chishti of Ajmer. I say this for two reasons: one, because irrespective of their conjunctural specificities, such accounts become a part of textual and popular life-stories of prominent Sufis, forming the template for recollecting the exploits of subsequent, lesser (but no less important), local figures. And also because standard tropes, such as the dumb idol breaking its silence under the power of a Sufi Shaikh to recite the Islamic creed, as found in medieval Persian texts, contribute to the valorization of the shahida (credo), and even quotidian Indian Muslim signs (like kalmi, or index finger which is raised analogically during prayer in testimony of the singularity of Allah, or even the ablutionary water-pot badhna) in a whole range of popular accounts of warriors and Sufis in the east-Uttar Pradesh countryside [yes Uttar Pradesh].8

The Language Question To give a not so obvious example, we need to appreciate the contribution to the development of Hindavi (language) by the great Amir Khusro, the Delhi-based thirteenth to fourteenth century Sufi, intellectual, musician,

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demotic, and Persian poet. But we also need to pay attention to the language of excess in which Khusro characterizes the fourteenth century conquest of the southern Hindu polities by the Delhi Sultan. I say this because, faced with the foregrounding of conquest and conflict by the New Hindu History, we, as historians, have to produce alternative histories of conflict and conquest. We cannot forever take recourse to an essentialist notion of Indian syncretism and leave the history of conflict to the sectarian ideologues and demagogues. Let me move synoptically to contemporary Persian accounts of medieval conquest. Not a medievalist myself, I am in unfamiliar waters, but I still would like to draw your attention to Amir Khusro, the great Sufi of Delhi; Hazrat Nizamuddin’s celebrated disciple; scholar, mystic, philosopher, soldier, politician, musician, credited with the development of both sitar and the tabla, and arguably the greatest of the Indo-Persian poets who composed verses in Arabic, Hindi, and Persian. Khusro’s riddles, puns, and marriage songs are sung very widely to this day. In Nuh-i-Sipihr, his ode to north India, Khusro the “Hindustani Turk” celebrates everything Hindustani—from its flora and fauna to its cities, its people, its food, and drink: he would much rather enjoy the raw sugar of Hindustan than the refined sweets of Iran, be a parrot in Delhi’s Basti Nizamuddin than a nightingale in Shiraz.9 Har qaum rast raˉ hi dini wa qibla gāhi [each community has a way, religion, and sacred place to worship], Khusro’s message is best summed up in this celebrated catholic phrase (Alam 2004: 120). But he also wrote a prose account in Persian of the Delhi Sultan Alauddin Khilji’s conquest of the southern kingdoms in late thirteenth century to compete with the official Fateh-i -nāmah or chronicle of victory composed by the official court historian. I am not concerned here with the motivations behind the Delhi Sultan Alauddin’s thrust into Warrangal and Mabar, but with the language of excess in which Khusro represents the violence of that King’s conquest of the Deccan. A  large part of this sprang from Khusro’s linguistic conceits, his attempt, as a modern translator puts it, to perform verbal gymnastics with Persian prose. Most sections of Khusro’s account were given a verse heading to tell the reader with what similes and metaphors the author had ingeniously sprayed the text to hold it together with his literary virtuosity. In  the English translation completed by a young Mohammad Habib in 1921, entire sections are strung together with such allusions as “allusions to hills and passes,” “allusions to sword,” “allusions to saddle and bridle,” and “allusions to the betel leaf.” Stereotypical contrasts between the “rice made Hindus” and “the iron bodies of the Musalmans” abound (Habib 1974: ii, 149–270). Unable to withstand the invaders, Rai Laddar Deo collects heaps of his buried treasure, constructs a golden image of himself, “and in acknowledgment of having become tribute payer, placed a golden chain round its neck.” He then sends this enslaved golden image of himself with an ambassador

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to the commander of the attacking force. Among the many treasures proffered by the demon Rai Laddar were “the mad elephants of Mabar [south-eastern coast of India], not the vegetarian elephants of Bengal”[!] When the messengers of the Rai came before the red canopy “[…] they rubbed their yellow faces on the earth till the ground itself acquired their color; next they drew out their tongues in eloquent Hindi more sharp than the Hindi sword, and delivered the message of the Rai.” (Habib 1974: 215) The play on the word Hindi by one of the forerunners of the Hindavi language is all there is to this scene of submission sketched by Amir Khusro. The bows of Persia, lances of Tartary, and Hindi or Indian swords were the famous weapons in medieval Persian literature, but the “eloquent Hindi more sharp than the Hindi sword” was not the demotic speech of north India of which Khusro was a master, but a proto-vernacular of the peninsula, approximate to the proto Telugu of modern Tamil Nadu on the south-eastern coast of India. I need not comment further to bring out the stereotypical tropes of Hindu vs. Musalman that it contains. Nor do I wish to find historical accuracy, say for the slaughter of Banik Deo and his thousand swift horsemen who made a “night attack” on this fortified “Muslim army  […] when the  [dark] Hindufaced evening had [already] made a night attack on the sun and sleep had closed the portals of the eyes and besieged the fort of the pupil” (Habib 1974: 208). I  am not  an expert in this period, and I have a limited proposition to offer. To continue to celebrate Amir Khusro’s contribution to Indian popular culture, while ignoring the tropes of excess and of stereotype that his arcane Persian abounds in is to be wedded to a victor/victim’s account of the Delhi Sultan Allaudin’s military campaigns in peninsular India, independent of both language and of representation. It is also to abolish the distance between a contemporary “Muslim” then and a late-nineteenth or early twenty-first century Hindu/Muslim/Indian now.

Stereotyping Otherness If the Delhi Sultan Allauddin’s southern conquests are available to us through Amir Khusro’s extravagant linguistic conceits, what sort of a language of defeat went into the making of a regional or pan-Indian stereotype about the Musalman—as conqueror and “intimate enemy?” One such reverse amplification can be discerned in the invocation sarhe-chauhatar [74 and a half ] that I am informed is still commonly inscribed by writers of confidential letters in Bengal: a non-addressee daring to open the letter would incur the sin equivalent to the killing of that number of Rajputs, the combined weight of whose sacred thread at the siege of Chittaur by the Mughal Emperor Akbar in the sixteenth century amounted to 74 and a half maunds!10 The colonial official-ethnographer

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William Crooke also reported the use of the charm 74 on letters written by Hindus in late nineteenth century Uttar Pradesh, “of which one not very probable explanation,” he wrote, is “that they represent the weight in maunds of the gold ornaments taken from the Rajput dead at the famous siege of Chithor” (1896: 39). Notice here that this memory of “Hindu Defeat” is, shall I say, of a “magico realist” and not a historicist variety, though as Gyan Pandey showed, the late 1980s also saw a fair mixing of a remembered, iron-in-the-soul historicism with a good deal of language of excess (Pandey 1994). But sitting at Rudauli, an hour’s horse ride from Ayodhya, a prominent Awadh-based Mughal Sufi also wrote a hagiography of Syed Salar Masud, a Ghazi-Jehadi-Shaheed connected with the campaigns of Mahmud of Ghazni, c. 1000 CE, popularly venerated as Ghazi Miyan since the late thirteenth century. Building on the hagiographical and folkloric career of Ghazi Miyan, one could venture that at the level of the popular, a cluttered past was what a large number of people inhabited. Violence, clash, and conquest very often got infused with local lore and tropes, such that a Ghazi wielding the sword of Islam could also get inscribed in popular memory as a doting mother’s only son (begot after repeated supplications at holy shrines) who dies saving cows of the cowherds, associated most notably with the great Indian devotional deity Krishna, and pack transporters attached to his army. And this martyrdom takes place poignantly so on the day of his wedding (Amin 2016). This Turkic Ghazi-warrior blesses infertile women with male children, he is that putative brother who brings news of the natal village to housewives in distant households (Amin 2016: part II: Lore). Mainstream “secular” history writing would, and has, found such blurrings uncomfortable. It prefers operating instead with the binary Sufi/warrior. In a real sense, secularism in the present has required giving assent to a story of India’s past which minimized conflict and foregrounds harmony—or “living together separately,” to cite the recent collection of scholarly essays (Hasan and Roy 2005). Outside such a view, communities in the present were often based on recognition and re-imaginings of conflicts of the past. Within a broad, secular-national view—dominant till recently, a history of conflict/strife/ difference could not be the basis of the fashioning of the self in the present.

Challenges to Democracy in India The real challenge of and to history has emerged in the past 30 years with a deepening of the process of democracy in India, broadly speaking. And here I will have space only to allude cryptically to two developments. Electorally, there has been a very significant rise and consolidation of middle castes and Dalit (“untouchable”) groups—which had participated in, but never ran the democratic show till quite recently. The other is the recognition of gendered

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presence, both electorally and socially, amidst a continuing spate of violence against women both inside homes and on the streets. What is important for my argument is that both these newer developments—the now larger “presence” of Dalits (the wretched “untouchables” of an earlier discursive formation) and women have resulted in a greater recognition of contemporary difference as constitutive of the nation. Should this not  lead to the writing up of the imaginings of conflicts of the past—an eleventh century Indo-Turkic warrior saint with a multi-religious following down to the present, (for instance) as constitutive in a real sense of the life history of the nation? This is the question I wish at least some of us to ponder… But this seems easier said than done. Important issues remain. How are those of us trained in the academy to write up such pasts as history strangely embedded in religious imaginings. Or must card-carrying historians be content with sturdier and non-contentious themes? In any case, how does one enter the lifeworld of belief, yet write a non-believer’s account of it as a historian? This is a question that has troubled several of us in recent years. It is salutary in this context to revisit the excitement felt by the great French historian Marc Bloch in the 1920s, now that miraculous curing of scrofula by Royal Touch had definitely finished happening more than a century ago. Bloch was clear that it was the death of belief at the hand of rationalism and democracy that had empowered him to essay its history. Rubbing his hand with glee as he lay down his pen, he wrote: Now, it so happens, by an extremely fortunate chance, that this miracle, although extremely well-known and of admiringly long continuance, is one of those no longer believed in by anyone today; so that historical study of it by critical methods runs no risk of shocking pious souls. [A] rare privilege, to be used to the full. (Bloch 1973: 232) Paraphrasing Collingwood, one could say that such celebratory sentiments are possible in the case of “events which have finished happening” (1928: 221). This in turn affords the historian the safe conduct to ply her trade unmindful of notions of collective affront, hurt sentiments, and the like. In the recent past, we have had to defend the right to teach texts by perfect scholars, as citadels of higher learning have taken institutional umbrage at such writings.11 And so, writing from New Delhi, I am doubly aware of the hitching of history, archaeology, and majoritarian belief in the service of the undoing of past historic wrongs, especially by my medieval co-religionists! To tell the story of Ghazi Miyan, improbably true as it is, is not to fudge the real issues about past violence and wrongs: conquest, pillage, desecration, destruction, and religious conversions—the grating exercise of Islamic despotism in the land of the Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi. It is to essay a history of popular truths about

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each of these processes, not  by retreating into the interiority of an autochthonous “popular”—the alley of acalendrical time, impervious to real world momentous events.

Differences and Conflicts Shaping India’s History To return one last time to the warrior saint… The person Ghazi Miyan and his martyrdom at Bahraich in 1034 CE are unchronicled. Yet his exploits, as recounted in ballads and in a seventeenth century Persian hagiography, relate to a history—that of the Turkish conquest of north India. Historically dubious, these retellings nonetheless articulate aspects of a verifiable past conflict, creating in the process communities in the presence—communities that are based, in part, on a memorialized recognition of difference and conquest. And this articulation has a definite narrative form which subverts the dominant account of the Turkic conquest of north India, c. 1200 CE. To retell the story of Ghazi Miyan involves grappling with more than a narrative understanding of the warrior saint as a “just conqueror.” It also involves being faced with unexpected “fabrications” of this virgin warrior in unexpected quarters. This then opens up the possibilities of creating a new and unfamiliar—and defamiliarizing historical narrative of the “sword of Islam” in India. To overlook the story of Ghazi Miyan as recounted in hagiography and ballads, and to concentrate instead on the well-established aspects of the syncretic and thaumaturgic aspects of the cult, is in other words to forgo the opportunity of penning an alternative history of the Turkish conquest of northern India: neither Turkiana (the sword of Islam) nor Sufiana (the gentle ways of the Islamic mystics)—to borrow the polarity of Suniti Kumar Chatterjee12—but rather a history which focuses attention upon this recalcitrant and popular figure of north India’s premier warrior saint. It is also to impoverish storytelling. The alternative history that I am advocating is not the writing of privileged textbook events which might involve a reworking and contextualizing of the facticities of Mahmud of Ghazni’s raids in this instance (Thapar 2005). Rather, I am putting forward the case for alternative histories of submerged, abbreviated, straight-jacketed events—recalcitrant events and recalcitrant lives—whose very retelling by historians is made possible by calling into question the terms on which the “Big Story” (as the popular idiom of modern times would call it) or the master narrative (as we understand it) is told and assented to both in the profession and within the nation. Alternative histories are not local histories; they are not  alternative to history; alternative histories are histories written from within the profession; ideally, they are also accessible to those outside the profession, i.e., one day they ought to become the Big Story. It serves little purpose to lay down the conditions for the possibility of such histories in advance of the actual writing. In  my book on Ghazi Miyan, I have tried to make narrative and historical sense of the hagiographic, sectarian,

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demotic, and performative literature about the “Prince of Martyrs” that have been refused entry into Clio’s estate on the grounds of evidential inadmissibility. Beyond the question of evidence, the story of the Ghazi groom—the continued persistence of his multi-religious cult over almost a millennium—carries important implications, I suggest, for the imagination of India as a community with a far from homogenous population and citizenry. It is now widely accepted that the political community of Indian nationals contains differences that it would be unhealthy for the nation-state to brush aside: regional, linguistic, caste, gender, and community affirmations are here to stay. The question is: if one can find traces of these differences and conflicts in our history, how may we relate these to the present life of the community of Indian nationals? This is a radical and serious issue to which Indian historiography must address itself if it is to reach out from the family of like-minded historians to the persons-in-communities who are struggling against the homogenizing currents which are constantly and dangerously seeking merely to define the “New Indian National.” The first lesson in the Hindi language primers for a good 40 years has been a aggressively nationalist poem in Sanskritic Hindi which has to be memorized by children 10–12 years old. The one for grade VII was entitled “Chahta hoon desh ki dharti tujhe kuch aur bhi doon” [“I wish my nation I could give you something more than my mind, body, life,” etc. It goes on in that vein.]. A stanza that sticks in my mind, as I recall my 12-year-old son struggling over it a decade ago, goes as follows: Yah suman lo, yah chaman lo, neer ka trn trn samarpit Chahta hun desh ki dharti tujhe kuch aur bhi dun [Here flowers, here the garden, each and every twig-n-straw from my nest I surrender to you the country of my birth. And yet I strive for giving something more to the motherland]. I disagreed when I tried to bring home the meaning of the word “trn trn” by telling my son that it was high Hindi for referring to the common “tinka”: a blade of grass, a straw, or a twig. My disagreement is heightened as I write amidst a continual cussedness about nationalism, where culture, politics, and a majoritarian view of “our common past” make any critical historical or “minority” perspective fall foul of the nation, and perhaps the law as well! Arguments about Indian culture now pivot around an aggressively narrow view of religion and the nation. Gyanendra Pandey has put it sharply: “Today in India, as in many other parts of the world, the religious is the national. At least that is a commonly propagated and broadly accepted view” (Pandey 2006: 90). Coming back to the metaphor of the nest cannibalized nationally, it is my firm view that the nation can never be made habitable by ruining the many dwellings where the peoples of India have nestled historically—with and without conflict.

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Notes 1 See the newspaper report “Erasing History: What the Battle over California’s Textbooks Really Means,” Indian Express, May 4, 2016. Available at http://indianexpress.com/ article/blogs/erasing-history-what-the-battle-over-california-textbooks-really-means/ (accessed July 16, 2019). 2 Here, I draw freely on earlier essays. See Amin (2005a, 2005b, 2016). 3 See the collection of essays in Gilmartin and Lawrence (2002). For an ethnographically nuanced transcription of a teenager’s memory of the relationship between Hindus and Muslims in a small Muslim princely state in Rajasthan in mid-1940s, see Ali (2005: 12–40). 4 See Chandra (1992) and Orsini (2002, especially Chapter 3: “The Uses of History”). 5 Cited in Chandra (1992: 123). 6 Orsini bases herself on Agarwal (1986). 7 I take this term from Pandey (1994). 8 See Zaidi (1977, 1984) and Alam (2004: 156–157); interview with Maulvi Khalid saheb, village Kinhaura, Bara Banki, December 1994; ballad of the capture of Palihar by Hathile, aka Ajab Salar, sung by Zainullah Dafali, Chittaura (Bahraich), May 1996. 9 For a discussion of “Nuh Sipihr,” see Mirza (1975: 182–187). 10 Communication from Gautam Bhadra. 11 See Amin (2012). 12 See the work of Suniti Kumar Chatterjee, “Daraf Khan Ghazi,” Sanskriti, i (1368 B.S).

References Agarwal, Purshottam (1986), “Rashtra-kavi ki rashytriy chetna”, Alochna (Oct–Dec), 127–136. Alam, Muzaffar (2004), The  Languages of Political Islam, c. 1200–1800. New Delhi: Permanent Black. Ali, Mubarak (2005), Dar-dar ki Thokren (5th ed.). Lahore: Fiction House. Amin, Shahid (2005a), “Un saint guerrier: Sur la conquête de l’Inde du Nord par les Turcs au XIe siècle”, Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociale, 60(2), 265–292. Amin, Shahid (2005b), “Representing the Musalman: Then and Now, Now and Then”, in Mayaram, Shail, Pandian, M.S.S., and Skaria, Ajay (eds.), Subaltern Studies, XII: Muslims, Dalits, and the Fabrication of History. New Delhi: Permanent Black and Ravi Dayal Publisher, 1–36. Amin, Shahid (2012), “When a Department Let Down a University: The  Pre-history of the Ramanujan Ramayana Essay in India”, The  Hindu, 19 January. Available at www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/when-a-department-let-the-university-down/ article2595429.ece (accessed June 2016). Amin, Shahid (2016), Conquest and Community: The Afterlife of Warrior Saint Ghazi Miyan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Appadurai, Arjun (1996), “Patriotism and Its Futures”, in Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 159–177. Asif, Manan Ahmed (2016), A Book of Conquest:The Chachnama and Muslim Origins in South Asia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bhargava, Rajeev (2011), “Should Europe Learn from Indian Secularism”, Seminar, 621. Available at www.india-seminar.com/2011/621/621_rajeev_bhargava.htm (accessed June 2016).

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Bloch, Marc (1973), The  Royal Touch: Sacred Monarchy and Scrofula in England and France (translation by J. E. Anderson). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Chandra, Sudhir (1992), Oppressive Present: Literature and Social Consciousness in Colonial India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Chatterjee, Partha (1994), The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Post-colonial Histories. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chatterjee, Partha (1997), “Beyond the Nation? Or Within?” Economic & Political Weekly, 32(1–2), 30–34. Available at www.epw.in/journal/1997/1-2/perspectives/beyondnation-or-within.html (accessed June 2016). Chatterjee, Partha (2002), “Introduction: History and the Present”, in Chatterjee, Partha and Ghosh, Anjan (eds.), History and the Present. New Delhi: Permanent Black, 1–22. Collingwood, R.G. (1928), “Limits of Historical Knowledge”, Journal of Philosophical Studies, 3(10), 213–222. Crooke, William (1896), Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India, vol. II. London: A. Constable & Co. Digby, Simon (1970), Encounters with Jogis in Indian Sufi Hagiography. London: School of Oriental and African Studies. Digby, Simon (1986),“Sufi Shaykh as a source of authority in Delhi Sultanate”, Purushartha, 9, 57–77. Gilmartin, David, and Lawrence, Bruce (eds.) (2002), Beyond Turk or Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia. New Delhi: University of Florida Press/India Research Press. Habib, Mohammad (1974), Politics and Society during the Early Medieval Period, vol. I. New Delhi: Peoples Publishing House. Hasan, Mushirul, and Roy, Asim (eds.) (2005), Living Together Separately: Cultural India in History and Politics. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Mirza, Mohammad Wahid (1975  [1962]), The  Life and Works of Amir Khusrau. Lahore: National Committee for Celebration of 700th Anniversary of Amir Khusrau. Orsini, Francesca (2002), The Hindi Public Sphere 1920–1940: Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Pandey, Gyanendra (1994), “The New Hindu History”, South Asia, XVII (issue sup 001), 97–112. doi:10.1080/00856409408723218. Pandey, Gyanendra (2006), Routine Violence: Nations, Fragments, Histories. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Sen, Amartya (1993), “Threats to Indian Secularism”, New York Review of Books (April 8), 30. Sen, Amartya (2015), The  Country of First Boys and Other Essays. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Thapar, Romila (2005), Somnatha: Many Voices of a History. New Delhi: Penguin. Zaidi, Ali Mohammad (1977), Apnī yāden̲, Rūdaulī kī bāten̲. Rudauli: Bārahbankī. Zaidi, Ali Mohammad (1984), Bara Banki: jugrafiya, tarikh wa digar aham waqiat waghaira. Lucknow: Nami Press.

Part II

Other Territories, Other Epistemologies Amplifying the Knowledges of the South

3 THINKING-FEELING WITH THE EARTH Territorial Struggles and the Ontological Dimension of the Epistemologies of the South Arturo Escobar

Introduction: Other Knowledges, Other Worlds Epistemologies of the South is in all likelihood the most compelling framework in many decades for social transformation to emerge at the intersection of the global North and the global South, theory and practice, and the academy and social life. The proposal does not claim to have arrived at a new land of general theories and Big Ideas—in fact, this is explicitly not one of its goals—, yet at the same time it outlines trajectories for thinking otherwise, precisely because it carves a space for itself that enables thought to re-engage with life and attentively walk along the amazing diversity of forms of knowledge held by those whose experiences can no longer be rendered legible by Eurocentric knowledge in the academic mode, if they ever were. The Epistemologies of the South framework provides workable tools for all those of us who no longer want to be complicit with the silencing of popular knowledges and experiences by Eurocentric knowledge, sometimes performed even in the name of allegedly critical and progressive theory. The Epistemologies of the South might also be useful to those who have been at the receiving end of those colonialist categories that have transmogrified their experiences, translated them into lacks, or simply rendered them utterly illegible and invisible. The Epistemologies of the South framework has been developed by its author, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, over the span of three decades through a series of books and political engagements with intellectuals and social movements in various parts of the world.1 These engagements include the author’s central role in the World Social Forum since its inception in 2001. Its main pillars are what the author terms “the sociology of absences,” effected by five “monocultures” (derived from the dominance of capitalist modernity, concerning knowledge,

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the classification of differences, scale, temporality, productivity, and efficiency); the “sociology of emergences,” which seeks to redress such monocultures to bring into light the multiplicity of social experience (based on plural forms and ecologies of knowledge, temporalities, recognition of differences, trans-scales, and productivities); intercultural translation across diverse knowledges and struggles; and the notion of cognitive justice as a necessary correlate of social justice. The framework explicitly attempts to build a non-Eurocentric approach to social transformation. More recently, the author has outlined a genealogy of a “non-Occidentalist West,” that is, an account of those authors within the West that transcended Eurocentric visions of the world, such as Blaise Pascal and Nicolas de Cusa. While the Epistemologies of the South framework is solidly structured in terms of these notions, it can be said that it continues to evolve in the encounter with new actors and situations. In identifying the infinite diversity of the world as one of its basic premises, the Epistemologies of the South framework clearly takes on an ontological dimension. By this I mean that, in speaking about knowledges, the Epistemologies of the South framework is also speaking about worlds. Simply said, multiple knowledges, or epistemes, refer to multiple worlds, or ontologies. The  aim of this chapter is to draw out further the ontological dimension of the Epistemologies of the South by setting it in to dialogue with certain trends in contemporary critical theory that share with the Epistemologies of the South its fundamental ethical-political orientation of learning at least as much from the experience, knowledge, and struggles of subaltern social groups as from the academy. These trends—broadly encompassed within a field that we will call “political ontology”—stem from the proposition that many contemporary struggles for the defense of territories and difference are best understood as ontological struggles and as struggles over a world where many words fit, as the Zapatistas put it; they aim to foster the pluriverse. What this ontological angle adds to our understanding of contemporary struggles will become clear as the argument is developed. Section  1 of the chapter offers some general remarks on the ontological character of Epistemologies of the South, building on some of its key premises. Section 2 provides an intuitive introduction to the concept of relationality and “relational ontologies” by engaging readers in an imagination exercise that asks them to situate themselves within a complex river landscape in a Colombian rainforest. Section 3 outlines the framework for the political ontology of territorial struggles in Latin America, based on the defense of their territories by indigenous, Afrodescendant, and peasant groups, particularly against largescale mining and agro-fuel projects. It  argues that these extractivist projects can be seen as strategies for the ontological occupation of the territories, and hence that struggles against them constitute veritable ontological struggles. Finally, Section 4 engages in a reversal that is well-known to the Epistemologies of the South framework: it suggests that the knowledges connected with these

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struggles are actually more sophisticated and appropriate for thinking about social transformation than most forms of knowledge produced within the academy at present. This is so for two main reasons: first, because the knowledges produced from territorial struggles provide us with essential elements for thinking about the profound cultural and ecological transitions needed to face the inter-related crises of climate, food, energy, poverty, and meaning; and second, because these knowledges are uniquely attuned to the needs of the earth. As the chapter title suggests, those who produce them sentipiensan con la Tierra (they think-feel with the earth); they orient themselves toward that moment when humans and the planet can finally come to co-exist in mutually enhancing manners.2

The Ontological Dimension of the Epistemologies of the South The Epistemologies of the South framework is based on a series of premises and strategies, often effectively summarized by its author in compact formulations and radical reversals which nevertheless point at crucial problems within contemporary theory (Santos 2002, 2006, 2014).3 Perhaps the best starting point for our purposes here is the saying that the contemporary conjuncture is best characterized by the fact that we are facing modern problems for which there are no longer modern solutions. Ontologically speaking, one may say that the crisis is the crisis of a particular world or set of world-making practices, the world that we usually refer to as the dominant form of Euro-modernity (capitalist, rationalist, liberal, secular, patriarchal, white, or what have you). If the crisis is then caused by this patriarchal capitalist modern world, it follows that facing the crisis implies transitions toward its opposite, that is, toward a multiplicity of worlds we will call the pluriverse. This is precisely what one of the major premises of Epistemologies of the South underscores, in stating that the diversity of the world is infinite; succinctly, the world is made up of multiple worlds, multiple ontologies or realities that are far from being exhausted by the Eurocentric experience or reducible to its terms. The invisibility of the pluriverse points at the sociology of absences. Here again, we find an insightful formulation of the Epistemologies of the South framework: what doesn’t exist is actively produced as non-existent or as non-credible alternative to what exists. The social production of non-existence points at the effacement of entire worlds through a set of epistemological operations already mentioned. As we shall see in the next section, the worlds so effaced are characterized by relational ways of being that challenge the epistemological operations that effect absences. Conversely, the proliferation of struggles in defense of territory and cultural difference suggests that what emerges from such struggles are entire worlds, which we will call relational worlds or ontologies. There are clear ontological dimensions to the two main strategies introduced by Epistemologies of the South, namely, the sociology of absences (the production of non-existence

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points at the non-existence of worlds, and often implies their ontological occupation) and the sociology of emergences (the enlargement of those experiences considered valid or credible alternatives to what exist entails the forceful emergence of relational worlds through struggles). Finally, there are some principles of Epistemologies of the South that suggest the connection between the production of theory and ontology. The first is that the understanding of the world is much broader than the Western understanding of the world. This means that the transformation of the world, and the transitions to the pluriverse or the civilizations transitions adumbrated by many indigenous, peasant, and Afrodescendant activists, might happen (indeed, are happening) along pathways that might be unthinkable from the perspective of Eurocentric theories. Said differently, there is a glaring gap between what most Western theories today can glean from the field of social struggles, on the one hand, and the transformative practices actually going on in the world, on the other. This gap is increasingly clear; it is a limit faced by mainstream and Left theories alike, stemming from the mono-ontological or intra-European origin of such theories. To think new thoughts, by implication, requires moving out of the epistemic space of Western social theory and into the epistemic configurations associated with the multiple relational ontologies of worlds in struggle. As is argued in this chapter, sources of novel theoretical-political projects do exist, but they are to be found at present in the knowledges, practices, and strategies of subaltern actors as they mobilize in defense of their relational worlds.4

Yurumanguí: Introducing the Relational Worlds Picture a seemingly simple scene from one of the many rivers that flow from the Western Andean Mountain range toward the Pacific Ocean in Colombia’s southern Pacific rainforest region—inhabited largely by Afrodescendant communities—, such as the Yurumanguí River5: a father and his six-year-old daughter paddling with their canaletes (oars) seemingly upstream in their potrillos (local dugout canoes) at the end of the afternoon, taking advantage of the rising tide; perhaps they are returning home after having taken their harvested plantains and their catch of the day to the town downstream, and bringing back some items they bought at the town store—unrefined cane sugar, cooking fuel, salt, notebooks for the children, or what have you. On first inspection, we may say that the father is “socializing” his daughter into the correct way to navigate the potrillo, an important skill as life in the region greatly depends on the ceaseless going back and forth in the potrillos through rivers, mangroves, and estuaries. This is correct in some ways; but something else is also going on; as locals are wont to say, speaking of the river territory, acá nacimos, acá crecimos, acá hemos conocido qué es el mundo (here we were born, here we grew up, here we have known what the world is). Through their nacer~crecer~conocer, they enact the manifold practices through which their territories/worlds have been made

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since they became libres (i.e., free, not enslaved peoples) and became entangled with living beings of all kinds in these forest and mangrove worlds. Let us travel to this river and immerse ourselves deeply within it and experience it with the eyes of relationality; an entire way of worlding emerges for us. Looking attentively from the perspective of the manifold relations that make this world what it is, we can see that the potrillo was made out of a mangrove tree with the knowledge the father received from his predecessors; the mangrove forest is intimately known by the inhabitants who traverse with great ease the fractal estuaries it creates with the rivers and the always moving sea; we begin to see the endless connections keeping together, and always in motion, this inter-tidal “aquatic space” (Oslender 2008), including connections with the moon and the tides that enact a non-linear temporality. The  mangrove forest involves many relational entities involving what we might call minerals, mollusks, nutrients, algae, microorganisms, birds, plant, and insects—an entire assemblage of underwater, surface, and above-ground life. Ethnographers of these worlds describe it in terms of three non-separate worlds (el mundo de abajo or infraworld; este mundo, or the human world; and el mundo de arriba, or spiritual/supraworld). There are comings and goings between these worlds, and particular places and beings connecting them, including “visions” and spiritual beings (Restrepo 1996). This entire world is narrated in oral forms that include storytelling, chants, and poetry. This dense network of interrelations may be called a “relational ontology.” The mangrove-world, to give it a short name, is enacted minute by minute, day by day, through an infinite set of practices carried out by all kinds of beings and life forms, involving a complex organic and inorganic materiality of water, minerals, degrees of salinity, forms of energy (sun, tides, moon, relations of force), and so forth. There is a rhizome “logic” to these entanglements, a “logic” that is impossible to follow in any simple way, and very difficult to map and measure, if at all; it reveals an altogether different way of being and becoming in territory and place. These experiences constitute relational worlds or ontologies. To put it abstractly, a relational ontology of this sort can be defined as one in which nothing pre-exist the relations that constitute it. Said otherwise, things and beings are their relations, they do not exist prior to them. As the anthropologist Tim Ingold put it, these “worlds without objects” (2011: 131) are always in movement, made up of materials in motion, flux, and becoming; in these worlds, living beings of all kinds constitute each other’s conditions for existence; they “interweave to form an immense and continually evolving tapestry” (2011: 10). Going back to the river scene, one may say that “father” and “daughter” get to know their local world not through distancing reflection, but by going about it, that is, by being alive to their world. These worlds do not require the divide between nature and culture in order to exist—in fact, they exist as such only because they are enacted by practices that do not rely on such divide. In a relational ontology, “beings do not simply

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occupy the world, they inhabit it, and in so doing—in threading their own paths through the meshwork—they contribute to their ever evolving weave” (Ingold 2011: 71). Commons exist in these relational worlds, not  in worlds that are imagined as inert and waiting to be occupied. Even if the relations that keep the mangrove-world always in a state of becoming are always changing, to mess up significantly with them often results in the degradation of such worlds. Such is the case with industrial shrimp farming schemes and oil palm plantations for agro-fuels, which have proliferated in tropical regions in many parts of the world, often built at the expense of mangrove and humid forest lands, with the aim to transform them from “worthless swamp” to agro-industrial complexes (Ogden 2011). Here, of course, we find many of the monocultural operations at play: the conversion of everything that exists in the mangrove-world into “nature” and “nature” into “resources;” the effacing of the life-enabling materiality of the entire domains of the inorganic and the non-human, and their treatment as “objects” to be had, destroyed, or extracted; and linking the forest worlds so transformed to “world markets” for profit. In these cases, the insatiable appetite of the one-world world spells out the progressive destruction of the mangrove-world, its ontological capture, and reconversion by capital and the state (Deleuze and Guattari 1988; Escobar 2008). The dominant world, in short, denies the mangrove-world its possibility of existing as such. Local struggles constitute attempts to re/establish some degree of symmetry to the partial connections that the mangrove-worlds maintain with the dominant worlds.

Territoriality, Ancestrality, Worlds: Outline of Political Ontology Elders and young activists in many territorial communities worldwide (including increasingly in urban areas) eloquently express why they defend their worlds even at the price of their lives. In the words of an activist from the Afrodescendant community of La Toma, also in Colombia’s southwest, engaged in a struggle against gold mining since 2008, “It  is patently clear to us that we are confronting monsters such as transnational corporations and the state. Yet nobody is willing to leave her/his territory; I might get killed here but I am not leaving.”6 Such resistance takes place within a long history of domination and resistance, and this is essential for understanding territorial and commons defense as an ontological political practice. La Toma communities, for instance, have knowledge of their continued presence in the territory since the first half of the XVII century. It’s an eloquent example of what activists call “ancestrality,” referring to the ancestral mandate that inspires today’s struggles and that persists in the memory of the elders, amply documented by oral history and scholars (Lisifrey et  al. 2013). This  mandate is joyfully celebrated in oral poetry and song: Del Africa llegamos con un legado ancestral; la memoria del mundo debemos recuperar (“From Africa we arrived

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with an ancestral legacy; the world’s memory we need to recuperate”).7 Far from an intransigent attachment to the past, ancestrality stems from a living memory that orients itself to the ability to envision a different future—a sort of “futurality” that imagines, and struggles for, the conditions that will allow them to persevere as a distinct world.8 Within relational worlds, the defense of territory, life, and the commons are one and the same. To this extent, this chapter’s argument can be stated as follows: The  perseverance of communities, commons, and the struggles for their defense and reconstitution—particularly, but not  only, those that incorporate explicitly ethno-territorial dimensions—involve resistance and the defense and affirmation of territories that, at their best and most radical, can be described as ontological. Conversely, whereas the occupation of territories by capital and the state implies economic, technological, cultural, ecological, and often armed aspects, its most fundamental dimension is ontological. From this perspective, what occupies territories is a particular ontology, that of the universal world of individuals and markets that attempts to transform all other worlds into one. By interrupting the neoliberal globalizing project of constructing a single globalized world, many indigenous, Afrodescendant, peasant, and poor urban communities are advancing ontological struggles. The struggle to maintain multiple worlds—the pluriverse—is best embodied by the Zapatista dictum, un mundo donde quepan muchos mundos (a world where many worlds fit). Many of these worlds can thus be seen as engaged in struggles over the pluriverse. Another clear case of ontological occupation of territories comes from the southernmost area in the Colombian Pacific, around the port city of Tumaco. Here, since the early 1980s, the forest has been destroyed and communities displaced to give way to oil palm plantations. Inexistent in the 1970s, by the mid-1990s they had expanded to over 30,000 hectares. The monotony of the plantation—row after row of palm as far as you can see, a green desert of sorts— replaced the diverse, heterogeneous, and entangled world of forest and communities. There are two important aspects to remark from this dramatic change: first, the “plantation form” effaces the relations maintained by the forest-world; emerging from a dualist ontology of human dominance over so-called “nature” understood as “inert space” or “resources” to be had, the plantation can thus be said to be the most effective means for the ontological occupation and ultimate erasure of local relational worlds. In fact, plantations are unthinkable from the relational perspective of forest-worlds; within this world, forest utilization and cultivation practices take on an entirely different form that ecologists describe in terms of agro-ecology and agro-forestry; even the landscape, of course, is entirely different. Not far from the oil palm plantations, as it was already mentioned, industrial shrimp companies were also busy in the 1980s and 1990s transforming the mangrove-world into disciplined succession of rectangular pools, “scientifically” controlled. A  very polluting and destructive industry

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especially when constructed on mangrove swamps, this type of shrimp farming constitutes another clear example of ontological occupation and politics at play (Escobar 2008). One of the main frameworks proposed for understanding the occupation of territories and resistance to such occupation is that of political ontology (Blaser 2010, 2014). On the one hand, political ontology refers to the power-laden practices involved in bringing into being a particular world or ontology; on the other hand, it refers to a field of study that focuses on the inter-relations among worlds, including the conflicts that ensue as different ontologies strive to sustain their own existence in their interaction with other worlds. The framework’s goal is to contribute to illuminate paths toward the planet’s ontological reconstitution (de la Cadena 2010, 2015). It should be stressed, however, that this framework is not limited to ethnic minority territories. In different ways, it applies to all social groups worldwide, including to the ontological occupation of popular neighborhoods in many of the world’s urban areas.9 It should also be made clear that the framework builds on, and does not seek to replace, the frameworks of political economy (which influence many liberation struggles of the twentieth century) and political ecology. I believe, however, that the ontoepistemic emphasis reformulates some of the questions and insights of previous perspectives. Political ontology also helps to understand the persistence of the occupying ontologies. A crucial moment in this regard was the conquest of America, which some consider the point of origin of our current modern/colonial world system (e.g., Mignolo 2000). The most central feature of the dominant single world doctrine has been a twofold ontological divide: a particular way of separating humans from nature (the nature/culture divide); and the distinction and boundary policing between “us” (civilized, modern, developed) and “them” (uncivilized, underdeveloped), who practice other ways of worlding (the colonial divide). These (and many other derivative) dualisms underlie an entire structure of institutions and practices through which the single world is enacted. There are many signs, however, that suggest that the globalized world so constructed is unraveling. The growing visibility of struggles to defend mountains, landscapes, forests, territories, and so forth by appealing to a relational (nondualist) and pluri-ontological understanding of life is a manifestation of this crisis. The crisis thus stems from the models through which we imagine the world to be a certain way and construct it accordingly. This conjuncture and questions define a rich context for political ontology and pluriversal studies: on the one hand, the need to understand the conditions by which the idea of a single globalized world continues to maintain its dominance; on the other, the emergence of projects based on different ontological commitments and ways of worlding, including commoning (e.g., Nonini 2007; Bollier and Helfrich 2012; Bollier 2014), and how they struggle to weaken the dominant world project while widening their spaces of re/existence.

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The pluriverse is a tool to, first, make alternatives to the one-world plausible to one-worlders and, second, provide resonance to those other worlds that interrupt the one-world story (Blaser et al. 2014). Displacing the centrality of this dualist ontology, while broadening the space for non-dualist ontologies, is a sine qua non for breaking away from the one-world story. This implies a transition from one-world concepts, such as “globalization” and “global studies,” to concepts centered on the pluriverse as made up of a multiplicity of mutually entangled and co-constituting, but distinct worlds. The  notion of the pluriverse, it should be made clear, has two main sources: theoretical critiques of dualism and so-called “post-dualist” trends stemming from what is called “the ontological turn” in social theory, and the perseverance of nondualist philosophies (more often known as cosmovisions) that reflect a deeply relational understanding of life, such as Muntu and Ubuntu in parts of Africa; the Pachamama or Uma Kiwe among South American indigenous peoples; U.S. and Canadian American Indian cosmologies10; or even in the entire Buddhist philosophy of mind; they also exist within the West, as alternative Wests or non-dominant forms of modernity (Santos 2014). Some of the current struggles going on in Europe over the commons, energy transitions, and the relocalization of food, for instance, could be seen as struggles to reconnect with the stream of life; they also constitute forms of resistance against the dominant ontology of capitalist modernity. Worldwide, the multiple struggles for the reconstruction of communal spaces and for reconnecting with nature constitute an indubitable political activation of relationality. Urban and rural territorial struggles and struggles over the commons are often examples of such activation. All of the above are important elements of the Epistemologies of the South, particularly of the sociology of emergences.

Transitions to the Pluriverse, Buen Vivir, and the Politics of Theory We are now  in a position to return to our argument about why knowledges produced in the struggles for the defense of relational worlds might be more farsighted and appropriate to the conjuncture of modern problems without modern solutions than its academic counterparts. To substantiate this claim fully requires that these knowledges are located within a twofold context: that of the need for civilizational transitions, on the one hand, and the planetary dynamics brought to the fore by global climate change, the destruction of biodiversity, and the Anthropocene, on the other hand. The  first context involves a consideration of the multiplication of discourses of transition over the past decade; the second, the pressing historical need to become attuned again to what ecologist and theologian Thomas Berry has poetically called “the dream of the Earth” (Berry 1988, 1999). Territorial struggles, as it will be argued in this last section, are producing among the most insightful knowledges for the cultural and ecological

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transitions seen as necessary to face the crisis; these knowledges are also profoundly attuned to the self-organizing dynamics of the earth. Let us begin with the discourses of transition. The  emergence, over the past decade, of an array of discourses on the cultural and ecological transitions necessary to deal with the inter-related crises of climate, food, energy, and poverty is another powerful sign of the unraveling of single world doctrine and the emergence of the pluriverse. What globalizers call the Anthropocene points at the need for a transition. Transition discourses are emerging today with particular richness, diversity, and intensity to the point that a veritable field of “transition studies” can be posited as an emergent scholarly political domain. Notably, those writing on the subject are not limited to the academy; in fact, the most visionary transition discourses thinkers are located outside of it, even if most engage with critical currents in the academy. Transition discourses are emerging from a multiplicity of sites, principally social movements worldwide and some civil society NGOs, from some alternative scientific paradigms, and from intellectuals with significant connections to environmental and cultural struggles. Transition discourses are prominent in several fields, including those of culture, ecology, religion and spirituality, alternative science (e.g., complexity), futures studies, feminist studies, political economy, and digital technologies. The range of transition discourses can only be hinted here, and there needs to be a concerted effort at bringing together transition discourses in the North and the South. In the North, the most prominent include degrowth, a variety of transition initiatives, the Anthropocene, forecasting trends (e.g., Club of Rome; Randers 2012), the defense and economics of the commons (e.g., Bollier and Heilfrich 2012; Bollier 2014); and some approaches involving inter-religious dialogues and UN processes, particularly within the Stakeholders Forum. Among the explicit transition initiatives are the Transition Town Initiative (Rob Hopkins, UK), the Great Transition Initiative (Tellus Institute, US), the Great Turning ( Joanna Macy), the Great Work or transition to an Ecozoic era (Thomas Berry), and the transition from The  Enlightenment to an age of Sustainment (Tony Fry). In the global South, transition discourses include crisis of civilizational model, post-development and alternatives to development, Buen Vivir, communal logics and autonomía, food sovereignty, and transitions to post-extractivism. While the features of the new era in the North include post-growth, post-materialist, post-economic, post-capitalist, and post-dualist, those for the South are expressed in terms of post-development, post/non-liberal, post/non-capitalist, and post-extractivist.11 It should be pointed out that the ontological occupation of territories and worlds just described often takes place in the name of development, hence a renewed questioning of the civilizational imperatives of growth and development should be an important element of any transition. Like markets, development and growth continue to be among the most naturalized concepts in

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the social and policy domains. The  very idea of development, however, has been questioned by cultural critics since the mid-1980s; they questioned the core assumptions of development, including growth, progress, and instrumental rationality (e.g., Sachs 1992: 1; Rist 1997; Latouche 2009; Escobar 2011). These critics have argued that it is possible to imagine the end of development, emphasizing the notion of alternatives to development, rather than development alternatives, as goals for transition activists and policy makers. The idea of alternatives to development has become more concrete in South America in recent years with the notions of Buen Vivir (good living, or collective well-being according to culturally appropriate ways) and the rights of Nature. Defined as a holistic view of social life that no longer gives overriding centrality to the economy (Acosta and Martínez 2009), Buen Vivir “constitutes an alternative to development and, as such, it represents a potential response to the substantial critiques of post-development” (Gudynas and Acosta 2011: 78). Very succinctly, the Buen Vivir grew out of indigenous struggles as they articulated with social change agendas by peasants, Afro-descendants, environmentalists, students, women, and youth. Echoing indigenous ontologies, the Buen Vivir implies a different philosophy of life which enables the subordination of economic objectives to the criteria of ecology, human dignity, and social justice. The debates about the form Buen Vivir might take in modern urban contexts and other parts of the world, such as Europe, are beginning to take place. Degrowth, commons, and Buen Vivir are “fellow travelers” in this endeavor. They  are important areas of research, theorization, and activism for both Epistemologies of the South and political ontology. Another very important area of discussion debate and activism in South America, linked to Buen Vivir, is that of the rights of Nature. Together, Buen Vivir and the rights of Nature have re-opened the crucial debate on how do Latin Americans want to go on living. The rights of nature movement is thus at the same time a movement for the right to exist differently, to construct worlds and knowledges otherwise (e.g., Gudynas 2014). Buen Vivir and the rights of nature, resonate with broader challenges to the “civilizational model” of globalized development. The  crisis of the Western “civilizational model” is invoked by many movements as the underlying cause of the current crisis of climate, energy, poverty, and meaning. This emphasis is strongest among ethnic movements, yet it is also found, for instance, in peasant networks for which only a shift toward agroecological food production systems can lead us out of the climate and food crises (e.g., Via Campesina). Closely related is the “transitions to post-extractivism” framework. Originally proposed by the Centro Latinoamericano de Ecología Social in Montevideo, it has become an important intellectual-activist debate in many South American countries (Alayza and Gudynas 2011; Gudynas 2011; Massuh 2012; Coraggio and Laville 2014). The  point of departure is a critique of the intensification of extractivist models based on large scale mining, hydrocarbon exploitation, or extensive agricultural operations, particularly for agrofuels, such as soy,

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sugar cane, or oil palm; whether in the form of conventional—often brutal— neoliberal extractivist policies in countries like Colombia, Peru, or México, or following the neo-extractivism of the center-Left regimes, these are legitimized as efficient growth strategies. Let us now  move to the second context that makes the knowledges produced by those engaged in struggles for the defense of territories and relational worlds perhaps even more appropriate and meaningful than those produced from the detached perspectives of science and the academy. This  context is none other than the fate of the earth itself. One of the most compelling visions in this regard has been proposed by the North Carolina ecologist and theologian Thomas Berry. For Berry, “the deepest cause of the present devastation is found in a mode of consciousness that has established a radical discontinuity between the human and other modes of being and the bestowal of all rights on the humans” (1999: 4). He identifies governments, corporations, universities, and religions as the fundamental establishments that keep this state of affairs in place. We, moderns, have lost our integral relation with the universe, and must restore it by bringing about a new intimacy with the earth. As the first “radically anthropocentric society” (Berry 1988: 202), we have become rational, dreamless people. Given that we cannot be intimate with the earth within a mechanistic paradigm, we are in dire need of a new story that might enable us to reunite the sacred and the universe, the human and the non-human. The wisdom traditions, including those of indigenous peoples, are a partial guide toward this goal of re-embedding ourselves within the earth. Within these traditions, humans are embedded within the earth, are part of its consciousness, not an individual consciousness existing in an inert world. Every living being exists because all others exist. As a Nasa indigenous leader from southwest Colombia put it, somos la continuidad de la tierra, miremos desde el corazón de la tierra (“we are the extension of the earth, let us think from the earth’s heart”). Most Western intellectual traditions have been inimical to this profound realization.12 Given that the human has become a cosmic force itself, we (moderns and all humans) need to formulate a more explicit project of transformation and transition. Berry calls for a transition from “the terminal Cenozoic to the emerging Ecozoic era” or “from the period when humans were a disruptive force on the planet earth to the period when humans become present to the planet in a manner than is mutually enhancing” (Berry 1999: 7, 11). Above all, we need to recognize that modern culture provides insufficient guidance for the Ecozoic era, and that hence we need to go back to the earth as a source— which is precisely what many relational struggles in defense of the territories and the earth are doing.13 Activists at the forefront of these struggles will easily recognize Berry’s dictum that “Earth is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects” (2013: 4). The  many functional cosmologies maintained by many people throughout

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history, including in the alternative Wests themselves, uphold this principle. Within these stories, the universe is a vast manifestation of the sacred, and the sacred is saturated with being and spirituality. The new stories seek to reunite the sacred and the universe. While indigenous traditions have an important role to play in this endeavor, so does a transformed understanding of science, one which would help humans reinterpret their place at the species level within a new universe story. By placing it within a new cosmology, science would move beyond the dominant technical and instrumental comprehension of the world to be reintegrated with the phenomenal world, and so it would contribute to the re-encounter with the numinous universe. That Berry calls for a necessary complete restructuring of our civilization is perfectly understood by many activists of territorial struggles, activists of transitions to the pluriverse, and those who emphasize the need for a rediscovery of spirituality and the sacred.

Conclusion Epistemologies of the South and political ontology are theoretical-political projects that aim to reinterpret contemporary knowledges and struggles oriented toward the defense of life and the pluriverse. They  highlight ecologies of knowledge and ontological struggles in defense of territories and for reconnection with nature and life’s self-organizing and always emergent force, arguing that they constitute a veritable political activation of relationality. Moving beyond “development” and the economy are primary aspects of such struggles. They also show that in the last instance our human ability for enacting other worlds and worlds otherwise will depend on humans’ determination to rejoin the unending field of relations that make up the pluriverse.14 This  geopolitical epistemological and ontological reflection deconstructs and allows us to see anew the social and ecological devastation caused by dualistic conceptions, particular those that divide nature and culture, humans and non-humans, the individual and the communal, mind and body, and so forth. It  reminds those of us existing in the densest urban and liberal worlds that we, too, dwell in a world that is alive. Reflection on relationality re-situates the human within the ceaseless flow of life in which everything is inevitably immersed; it enables us to see ourselves again as part of the stream of life. Epistemologies of the South and political ontology are efforts at thinking beyond the academy, with the pueblos-territorio (peoples-territory) and the intellectual-activists linked to them. In  this regard, they show the limits of Western social theory; these limits arise from social theory’s continued reliance on its historical matrix, the modern dualist episteme, and ontology. Modern social theory continues to operate largely on the basis of an objectifying distancing principle, which implies a belief in the “real” and “truth”—an epistemology of allegedly autonomous subjects willfully moving around in a universe of self-contained objects. This ontology of disconnection ends up disqualifying

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those knowledges produced not about, but from the relation. It is thus that social theory comes to silence much of what brings life into being. To re-enliven critical thought thus requires bringing it again closer to life and the earth, including to the thoughts and practices of those struggling in their defense.

Coda On November 18, 2014, a group of 22 women started a courageous march from La Toma, Cauca, to the capital city of Bogotá, hundreds of kilometers away. They were greeted and joined by solidary people all along the way. This time their march was motivated by the continued illegal presence of large backhoe machines owned by outsiders engaged in gold mining. Very well-known is the fact that backhoe mining with the use of mercury and cyanide is very destructive. The  mining was destroying their river and polluting the water; people who opposed them received death threats. Despite repeated protests, demands, and international letters in support of the community’s efforts to get the machines confiscated or at least taken out of their territories, there was no effective action on the part of the state to do so, which motivated the march as a last resource action. The women’s various comunicados, invariably including the refrain: “Afrodescendant women’s movement for the protection of life and the defense of the ancestral territories,” involved exemplary statements of territorial and ontological politics. We cite a few here, in ending: We are Black women from the north of Cauca, descendants of African men and women who were enslaved, with knowledge about the ancestral value embedded in our territories. We know many of our ancestors had to pay for our freedom with their lives; we know of the blood that our ancestors spilled to get these lands; we know they worked for years and years in slavery to leave these lands to us. They taught us that you don’t sell land; they understood that we needed to ensure that our people could permanently remain in our territory. … Four centuries have passed, and their memory is our memory; their practices are our practices transmitted through our grandparents; our daughters and sons continue today reaffirming our identity as free peoples. … Today our lives are in danger and the possibilities of existing as Afrodescendant Peoples is minimal. Many men and women are threatened with death. We women have lived from ancestral mining, an activity that enabled our ancestors to buy their freedom, and ours. This activity is linked with agriculture, with fishing, with hunting and to ancestral knowledges that our elders and our midwives have inculcated in us so that we can remain as peoples. Because our love for life itself is stronger than our fear of death, we convene all of the solidarity of those opposed to illegal mining and opposed to the threats against the people that protect Life and the Ancestral Territories.

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Notes 1 The most important works in this regard are Santos (2002, 2006, 2014). 2 The  terms sentipensar and sentipensamiento are reported by Colombian sociologist Fals Borda (1984) as the living principle of the riverine and swamp communities of Colombia’s Caribbean coast. They  imply the art of living based on thinking with both heart and mind, reason and emotion (see www.youtube.com/ watch?v=LbJWqetRuMo [Accessed July 16, 2019]). Sentipensamiento was popularized by Eduardo Galeano (see, e.g., www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUGVz8wATls [Accessed July 16, 2019]). 3 In what follows, I use a number of Epistemologies of the South formulations from various sources, particularly Santos (2002, 2006, 2014); I have amended them slightly in some cases, which is why I do not include them as exact quotes. This section is not intended as a comprehensive or systematic presentation of the Epistemologies of the South; rather, I highlight a few of its principles that will allow me to underscore the ontological implications of the framework. 4 Santos describes the gap between Western theory and subaltern experience as the phantasmal relation between theory and practice. He makes clear that, at its most fundamental, this distance is also an ontological distance involving ontological conceptions of being and living that are quite distinct from Western individualism (2014). These conceptions are what we will call “relational ontologies” in the next section. In a similar vein, Santos takes a clear stand for what he calls “rearguard theories,” that is, the theoretical-political work that goes on in the transformative work of social movements. I couldn’t agree more (see, e.g., Escobar 2008 for a similar claim). 5 The Yurumanguí River is one of five rivers that flow into the bay of Buenaventura in the Pacific Ocean, with a population of about 6000 people, largely Afrodescendants. In 1999, thanks to active local organizing, the communities succeeded in securing the collective title to about 52,000 hectares (82% of the river basin). Armed conflict, the pressure from illegal crops, and mega development projects in the Buenaventura area, however, have militated against the effective control of the territory by locals. Nevertheless, the collective title implied a big step in the defense of their commons and the basis for autonomous territories and livelihoods. 6 Statement by Francia Marquez of the Community Council of La Toma, taken from the documentary La Toma, by Paula Mendoza, accessed May 20, 2013, at www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrgVcdnwU0M. Most of this brief section on La Toma comes from meetings in which I have participated with La Toma leaders in 2009, 2012, and 2014, as well as campaigns to stop illegal mining in this ancestral territory and the March to Bogotá of November 2014. 7 From the documentary by Mendoza cited above. 8 I borrow the term futurality from Australian designer Tony Fry (2012). 9 How not  to understand the situation in Ferguson, Missouri; Detroit, Michigan; Buenaventura in the Colombian Pacific; or of so many ethnic minority quarters in the big capitals of the global North, but as ontological (often ontological-military) occupations? 10 See the excellent collection of writings on the Idle No More movement (Kino-nda-niimi Collective 2014). Many of the articles, stories, and poems can be read on an ontological register. 11 See Escobar (2011, 2014) for a complete list of references. 12 Statement by Marcus Yule, gobernador Nasa, at the congress, “Política Rural: Retos, Riesgos y Perspectivas”, Bogotá, October 28–30, 2013. These ideas resonate with the extension of the Ubuntu principle (“I exist because you exist”) to the entire realm of the living.

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13 Berry developed a well worked out statement on the Anthropocene avant la lettre. As he put it in The Dream of the Earth, “We are acting on a geological and biological order of magnitude. … the anthropogenic shock that is overwhelming the earth is of an order of magnitude beyond anything previously known in human historical and cultural development. As we have indicated, only those geological and biological changes of the past that have taken hundreds of millions of years for their accomplishment can be referred to as having any comparable order of magnitude” (1988: 206, 211). One can read his proposal of the Ecozoic era as a purposive response to the Anthropocene. 14 On this topic, see Escobar (2018).

References Acosta, Alberto, and Martínez, Esperanza (eds.) (2009), El buen vivir. Una vía para el desarrollo. Quito: Abya-Yala. Alayza, Alejandra, and Gudynas, Eduardo (eds.) (2011), Transiciones, post-extractivismo y alternativas al extractivismo en el Perú. Lima: Red Peruana por una Globalización con Equidad (RedGE) y el Centro Latinoamericano de Ecología Social (CLAES). Berry, Thomas (1998), The Dream of the Earth. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. Berry, Thomas (1999), The Great Work: Our Way into the Future. New York: Bell Tower. Berry, Thomas (2013), “The  Determining Features of the Ecozoic Era”, The  Ecozoic, 3, 4–6. Blaser, Mario (2010), Storytelling Globalization from the Chaco and Beyond. Durham: Duke University Press. Blaser, Mario (2014), “Beyond the Common World? Ontological Conflicts and the Problem of Reasonable Politics”. Unpublished manuscript, Memorial University of New Foundland. Blaser, Mario, de la Cadena, Marisol, and Escobar, Arturo (2014), “Introduction: The Anthropocene and the One-World”. Draft in progress for the Pluriversal Studies Reader. Bollier, David (2014), Think Like a Commoner. A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers. Bollier, David, and Silke, Helfrich (eds.) (2012), The Wealth of the Commons: A World Beyond Market and the State. Amherst, MA: Levellers Press. Coraggio, José Luis, and Laville, Jean-Louis (eds.) (2014), Reinventar la izquierda en el siglo XXI. Hacia un diálogo norte-sur. Los Polvorines, Argentina: Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento. Available at http://biblioteca.clacso.edu.ar/clacso/se/20140918020441/ ReinventarLaIzquierda.pdf (accessed July 16, 2019). Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Félix (1988), Mil mesetas. Capitalismo y esquizofrenia.Valencia: Pre-Textos. de la Cadena, Marisol (2010), “Indigenous Cosmopolitics in the Andes:  Conceptual Reflections beyond Politics”, Cultural Anthropology, 25(2), 334–370. doi:10.1111/ j.1548-1360.2010.01061.x. de la Cadena, Marisol (2015), Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice across Andean Worlds. Durham: Duke University Press. Escobar, Arturo (2008), Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes. Durham: Duke University Press. Escobar, Arturo (2011), Encountering Development: The  Making and Unmaking of the Third World, 2nd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Escobar, Arturo (2014), Sentipensar con la Tierra: Postdesarrollo y Diferencia Radical. Medellín: Universidad Autónoma Latinoamericana. Escobar, Arturo (2018), Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds. Durham: Duke University Press. Fals Borda, Orlando (1984), Resistencia en el San Jorge. Bogota: Carlos Valencia Editores. Fry, Tony (2012), Becoming Human by Design. London: Berg. Gudynas, Eduardo (2011), “Más allá del nuevo extractivismo: transiciones sostenibles y alternativas al desarrollo”, in Ivonne Farah and Fernanda Wanderley (eds.), El desarrollo en cuestión. Reflexiones desde América Latina. La Paz: CIDES UMSA, 379–410. Gudynas, Eduardo (2014), Derechos de la naturaleza/Etica bicentrica y políticas ambientales. Lima: PDTG/redGE/CLAES. Gudynas, Eduardo, and Acosta, Alberto (2011), “La renovación de la crítica al desarrollo y el buen vivir como alternativa”, Utopía y Praxis Latinoamericana, 16(53), 71–83. Ingold, Tim (2011), Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge, and Description. New York: Routledge. Kino-nda-niimi Collective (2014), The Winter We Danced:Voices from the Past, the Future, and the Idle No More Movement. Winnipeg: Arp Books. Latouche, Serge (2009), Farewell to Growth. London: Polity Press. Lisifrey, Ararat, Vargas, Luis A., Mina, Eduardo, Rojas, Axel, Solarte, Ana María, Vanegas, Gildardo, and Vega, Anibal (2013), La Toma. Historias de territorio, resistencia y autonomía en la cuenca del Alto Cauca. Bogotá: Universidad Javeriana y Consejo Comunitario de La Toma. Massuh, Gabriela (ed.) (2012), Renunciar al bien común. Extractivismo y (pos)desarrollo en America Latina. Buenos Aires: Mardulce. Mignolo, Walter (2000), Local Histories/Global Designs. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Nonini, Donald (ed.) (2007), The Global Idea of the Commons. New York: Berghahn Books. Ogden, Laura (2011), Swamplife: People, Gators, and Mangroves Entangled in the Everglades. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Oslender, Ulrich (2008), Comunidades negras y espacio en el Pacífico colombiano: hacia un giro geográfico en el estudio de los movimientos sociales. Bogotá: Universidad Colegio Mayor de Cundinamarca, ICANH, Universidad del Cauca. Randers, Jorgen (2012), 2052: A  Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years. White River Junction,VT: Chelsea Green Publishing. Restrepo, Eduardo (1996), “Los tuqueros negros del Pacífico sur colombiano”, in Eduardo Restrepo and Jorge I. del Valle (eds.), Renacientes del Guandal. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional/Biopacífico, 243–350. Rist, Gilbert (1997), The History of Development. London: Zed Books. Sachs, Wolfgang (ed.) (1992), The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power. London: Zed Books. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2002), Towards a New Legal Common Sense. London: Butterworth. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2006), The Rise of the Global Left: The World Social Forum and Beyond. London: Zed Books. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2014), Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide. Boulder: Paradigm.

4 ON FINDING THE CINERARIUM FOR UNCREMATED UBUNTU On the Street Wisdom of Philosophy Mogobe Ramose

Introduction I propose to examine the following question: What does it mean to continue disregarding ubuntu, that is, to treat it as a footnote in the history and discourse on ethics, politics, economics, and law in South Africa? It is to be noted that I will vacillate between the “I” and the “we” with regard to the style of this essay. My primary concern is to use the “we” as identification, identifying myself historically as belonging to “the wretched of the Earth“ especially, “the bottom billion” (Collier 2008). My basic argument with regard to the question posed is that every human being has the right to exist and to reason (Gutierrez 1983: 101). This  argument is against the dogmatists of epistemicide. They perpetuate epistemicide through subtle and, sometimes, outright means of excluding ubuntu from the unilaterally defined and thus contestable concept of “science.” I turn to a critique of this concept.

Critique of the Concept of Science Science is the construction of knowledge according to prescribed standards and procedures. Experience and common sense knowledge are the necessary basis for the construction of scientific knowledge. The  latter distinguishes itself from the former precisely by including only the selected fragments from the former and then elevating the fragments to “scientific knowledge.” This evidently excludes elements of reality. By such exclusion, science affirms the necessary incompleteness of scientific knowledge (Santos 2014: 201). The present essay is not scientific in the conventional sense. It does not, however, claim

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to be complete. Its point of departure is resistance to the scientism of science. Scientism tends to suffer from opinionitis: the apparently irresistible compulsion to differ with other scientists even if the point of difference is incontestably vacuous. My resistance to scientism is not inspired by nor is it against method in the manner of Feyerabend (1975). My method does not lay any claim to play or game as such a claim might lead to the mistaken assumption that I belong to the homo ludens box a la Huizinga (1955). It is also not inspired by Senghor’s well-known and widely criticized proposition that “emotion is Negro as reason is Hellenic.” For me, it is clear that Senghor appears to have forgotten that the possibility condition for making such a proposition is precisely the ability to reason. So, why alienate reason from the “Negro” and donate it to the “Hellenic?” It is commanded that scientific language must be free of emotions. Passion, it is asserted, must be suppressed and excluded from scientific discourse because it tends to becloud objectivity. By extension, professional life must be free from passion because yielding to passion is compromising objectivity. Equanimity is the commandment of science. Obedience to this commandment is a concession to the questionable view that there is no relationship at all and thus no mutual influence between reason and emotions (Bohm 1994: 18). Against this, I argue that reason without passion is hollow, lifeless intellectual coma. In this essay, I do not obey the commandment of “science.”

The Method—Chaorder I shall write with reason and passion recognizing that the dance of “be-ing” is a complex rheomode requiring rhythm attuned to it. The split of the human being into “emotion” and “reason” is an arbitrary fragmentation of the oneness of the human being. The problem with this fragmentation (Bohm 1971, 1993) is that the fragments tend to be construed as the reality. Often the fragment is presented dogmatically as the truth as it is the case with the unilaterally defined concept of “science.” On this basis, the present essay does not have a “scientific” method. This is in order to underline the ethical imperative to recognize and implement the decolonization of methodologies (Smith 1999: 104). My disavowal of the scientific method does not mean that the essay is completely without a method in the everyday meaning of the word. It does have a method which is not in search of order. Order presupposes chaos. It requires rules and procedures that canalize and police the reasoning of those who choose to adopt and observe them. Seen from this perspective, order is arbitrary and dictatorial with regard to what must be considered rational or irrational; relevant or irrelevant and valid or invalid concerning reality. My method is not disorderly just because it is not in search of order from the perspective of “science.” It  also does not  aim at chaos because it does

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not consider chaos to be the opposite of order. Rather it is the movement of critical reason encountering a complexity of contrasting and contending experiences speaking to the insight that motion is the principle of be-ing. My method may be described as chaorder, chaos and order together on the understanding that the connective “and” is unacceptable to the extent that it establishes a divide between chaos and order (Prigogine 1985: 310). When philosophy, through critical meditation, arrives at the abysmal depth of be-ing; when its pensive look cannot have a full view of the incessantly expanding be-ing, then it becomes poiesophy: the immersion and diffusion into the wholeness of be-ing re-emerging as silent wisdom speaking non-sense: setu botlhale bja lesilo, in my mother tongue. Poiesophy is a philosophical negation of the fragmentation of the wholeness of be-ing. It is a challenge to scientism and dogmatism. In order to actualize this challenge, I will write part of this essay in my mother tongue, Northern Sotho. The classification “conquered” and “unconquered” preserves the historical character of the present discussion. It  is unlike the language of marginality, borders, and subalternity with particular reference to its implicit and explicit attachment to the idea that there is a “universe” with the human being as its “center.” I now turn to the justification on the use of my mother tongue. This will be followed by a critique of the language of marginality, borders, and subalternity.

Using the Vernacular Language My vernacular, Northern Sotho—a branch of the Bantu languages—, does not appear first or last in this essay. This is in order to discourage vertical hierocracy which is readily susceptible to the ethically questionable oppositional stratifications such as “superior” and “inferior,” “higher” and “lower,” as well as “top” and “bottom.” Instead, horizontal reasoning is preferred in recognition of the principle of equality as human beings. The use of my vernacular language without translation is not revenge on the imposed educational curriculum demanding the use of either English or Afrikaans as media for instruction and discourses in the humanities and social sciences, including the physical sciences in South Africa. Instead, it must be construed as a challenge to this dogmatism and scientism. The fundamental point of this challenge is that no single human language on planet Earth has a prior, superior, and exclusive right to be the medium of scientific discourse. Centuries of this dogmatism and scientism with regard, for example, to English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish served and continue to serve objectively the ideology of exclusion, oppression, suppression, and exploitation of the alienated “wretched of the earth.” The dominance of these languages recognizes difference in only one way, namely, by indifference, suppression, or condescending tolerance benignly called translation.

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Responding to this by using our own vernacular languages is treating the successors in title to colonialism to their own medicine, namely, “do unto others as you wish to be done to.” Accordingly, the use of my vernacular is fundamentally an ethical plea for epistemic and social justice. Consonant with this plea, this essay must be seen as a vast expanding plane inhabited by human and other beings existing in the context of holocyclic inter- and transaction, criss-cross, and zig-zag relations. It is in this vast expanding plane that human beings occupy spaces: spaces that are qualitatively different, but do not derogate from the principle of the equality of human beings as humans. Difference is not, by definition, opposition. It could also be an invitation to co-operation. Difference is an ethical issue that must always be dealt with in order to demonstrate the recognition, respect, and promotion of the principle of equality as human beings (McCarthy 1992: 369). It imposes the ethical obligation to be ready to listen and learn from the other (Bohman and Kelly 1996: 97; Healy 1998: 63–65, 2000: 71–73; Kimmerle and van Rappard 2011: 12). It demands transformational dialogue (Healy 2011: 302–303). The indispensable condition for the attainment of transformational learning must be predicated on the recognition that one’s ways of thinking and doing are on the same level as those of the other and may therefore be compared. Comparison is non-invidious (Healy 2000: 64–65) since it is not aimed at establishing a hierarchy of ways of thinking and doing coupled with ethical evaluation. The fundamental issue here is the validity of making comparison without prior and coincidental endorsement of either the methods or the purposes of the comparison. The suspension of judgment on the methods and purposes of comparison is crucial since it provides the space for dialectical and critical discussion with the other: a veritable “dialogical equality” (Healy 2000: 65). The language of marginality, borders, and subalternity is not always responsive to these considerations. I now turn to a critique of this language.

Critique of Marginality, Borders, and Subalternity My critique of the language of marginality, borders, and subalternity proceeds from two premises. One is that they tend to create the illusion that the speaker communicating a particular experience does so standing at the center of the pluriverse. Another is that often the voice of the speaker is substituted by that of the author. To overcome this, I have included the sub-title: on the street wisdom of philosophy. With regard to the first premise, it is a mistake to consider the “self ” as positioned at the center of the pluriverse. This  is because the claim that the pluriverse has a center is questionable (Cantore 1977: 403). The concept of the “center of the universe” is somewhat archaic and questionable since there is evidently more universes than one (Hawking and Mlodinow 2011: 183).

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The discovery that the pluriverse seems to have no center at all is a challenge to the reasoning that assumes the “self ” to be the “center” from and to which all reasoning must begin. The core of the challenge is the demand to de-center the “self.” A de-centered “self ” is an inextricable part of the wholeness of be-ing. It must reason from, with, through, and according to the vibrations as well as the variations of be-ing in its continual unfoldment. The reasoning emanating from this must be as rheomodic as the rheomode language of be-ing: a language without a center. Rheomode reasoning is not  the elimination of the “self ” (Foucault 1970: 315), but its de-centering. This is precisely what the language of marginality is yet to achieve. The  language of marginality is quite explicit on the use of “center” and “periphery” (Dussel 1985: 2). Often, the “center” is conceived of as having the magnetic power to attract whatever is around it to the inside of itself. Rarely, is it considered that the “center”—in view of its own internal political dynamics—could eject some human beings outside of its circle. The emphasis on the magnetic power of the “center” underlines the view that the human being is “at the center of the universe.” This is contrary to ubuntu philosophy (Ramose 2002: 43–53). The language of “borders” (Escobar 2007: 180) is characterized by the tacit acceptance —epistemologically, but not ethically—of the historically erected boundaries, especially those between the colonizer and the colonized; the conqueror and the conquered. The ethical dimension is stated unequivocally as the argument to make a decisive intervention into the very discursivity of the modern sciences in order to craft another space for the production of knowledge— another way of thinking, un paradigma otro, the very possibility of talking about “worlds and knowledges otherwise” (Escobar 2007: 179). Thus, despite its “decisive intervention,” the epistemological dimension will preserve the epistemic boundaries already erected by locating “another space for the production of knowledge” alongside the paradigm of the already existing “modern sciences.” What remains in this situation is reasoning on the basis of boundaries, that is, bounded reasoning. In this way, “theorizing from the borders” is a surreptitious return to the “center” and “periphery” mode of reasoning even when it describes itself as “critical border reasoning” (Mignolo and Tlostanova 2006: 206). It is significant that in subsequent lines these authors drop both “critical” and the inverted commas and argue quite expressly that “border thinking is the epistemology of the future, without which another world will be impossible” (Mignolo and Tlostanova 2006: 207). The language of “borders” thus remains captive to bounded reasoning. Subalternity refers to ranking that describes and defines power relations among human beings. The ranking order is hierarchical (Santos 2014: 172, 184, 200). On this basis, verticality or vertical reasoning is the fundamental point of departure for subalternity (Grosfoguel 2007: 213). In this way, subalternity is reminiscent of the well-known “traditional square of opposition”

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in logic (Bello 2011: 109). The “opposition,” even the alternation between the “superaltern” and the “subaltern,” is expressly stated. If one considers the prefixes, “super” and “sub” in Latin then the distance between that and “supra” and “infra” is manifestly narrow. Following from this, it is not farfetched to suggest that “subalternity” echoes the reasoning of Marx with regard to the “suprastructure” and the “infrastructure.” Whereas Marx retained the logic of Hegel, but rejected its substance, namely, idealism, so does “subalternity” retain vertical reasoning even though it is poised to challenge it. There  are two interrelated problems concerning subaltern reasoning. The  first is that it rests upon the presupposition of bounded reasoning. The second is that it establishes hierocracy. By so doing, it encourages the problematical duality of high and low; superior and inferior. The  effect of this encouragement is that subaltern reasoning epistemologically sustains the very oppressive structure of relations that it is ethically opposing. The  ethics of opposition must be matched with a language of opposition disengaged conceptually from the epistemological paradigm it is resisting. It must use “conceptual and political tools that do not reproduce“ the epistemological paradigm they are opposing (Santos 2014: 213). Furthermore, it must be predicated on the principle of equality enunciated from the perspective of horizontal reasoning. I now turn to the elucidation of horizontal reasoning.

Horizontal Reasoning Those laboring for their survival (Lukacs 1980: 3–4) alongside the killing employment machine of capitalism are regarded as living “outside” it as if there is proof that they ever wished to live inside its boundaries. My argument about proof here relates to the following two reasons. The first is that there are rare individuals who deliberately decided against owning the wealth bequeathed to them. Their refusal is based on the ethical view that the wealth in question is the product of an economic system to which they are opposed. The second is that there are materially poor individuals who are intellectually wealthy. Such individuals reject employment and refuse other opportunities made available by an economic system to which they are ethically opposed. The common thread that binds these kinds of individuals together is ethics. They live “outside” of the killing capitalist employment machine by choice and so they have no wish to belong “inside” its boundaries. Their option calls into question the epistemological significance of bounded reasoning. These considerations illustrate that the language of marginality, borders, and subalternity is not  necessarily the bearer of the perspective of those about whom it speaks. I now turn to the street wisdom of philosophy to illustrate this by focusing on the promises of politicians.

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On the Street Wisdom of Philosophy The  street is now  conferred with the biological dignity to be the mother of “street children.” Their speech is that none of us has the time to read books because our struggle for survival is an urgent matter of life and death right now. “None of us are deemed by you to have the right of access to books that will fill our reason with tools to liberate ourselves from epistemic and social injustice. We are able to construct our bookless philosophy and articulate some of it to you” (Santos 2014: 211). This  street wisdom of philosophy is chaorder inviting you to learn how to read, listen, and even to live according to setu botlhale bja lesilo  [silent wisdom speaking non-sense]. We invite you to listen to our thoughts on the promises of politicians.

The Promises of Politicians We live now. The heavenly dome is our roof. Mother earth is our bed. Our fireplace is everywhere where the bright and warm sunbeams heat our bodies. We  do not  need a bathroom for we receive showers of rain for free. We do not need toilets because even any convenient spot in your spotlessly clean majestic buildings does serve the purpose. After all, our need for toilets existed long before the historical birth of your human rights. Our sweethearts do not need an enclosed bedroom with a luxurious backache free bed. Our right to privacy is assured because we are welcomed and protected by the insects, the reptiles, and all the thorny and soft shrubs availed to us by mother earth. You are away from us and you need not wonder if we wish to be inside of your comfort zone. You are away from us, occupying a space different from ours. Our spaces exist alongside one another. Thus there are no boundaries between us. But we are aware of your captivity to bounded reasoning. For us, mother earth has not  erected boundaries between us. She  evidently decreed that there shall be difference such as that between male and female. Difference is indeed celebrated, as it is so very often the case, when women and men from different cultures and countries demolish artificial boundaries in ecstatic sexual union. We live now. We know the temporary cheers of democracy during the campaign for elections. The  cheers are disconsolate because soon after the election results are known we are consigned to the limbo of oblivion. We will be redeemed from this by opportunistic memory when yet another election is on the horizon. We know that democracy today is managed by business and answers with servile reverence to the will of business (Beder 2010). And so we know that ours is the age of timocracy and not democracy (Ramose 2012). We sit “in praise of idleness” (Russell 1935), wondering in deep contemplation why political leaders in Africa—Kwame Nkrumah, Mohammed Naguib, Haile Selassie, Patrice Lumumba, Farik Aboud, Habib Bourguiba, Philibert

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Tsiranana, Leopold Senghor, Jomo Kenyatta, Ahmadou Ahidjo, Ahmed Ben Bella, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Julius Nyerere, Houphuet Boigny, Agostinho Neto, Samora Machel, Emperor Bokassa, Robert Mugabe, Thomas Sankara, and Seretse Khama—have achieved only very limited success in the pursuit of a better life for all. Yes. Political holiness is not for everyone (Sobrino 1988: 81). The  tiny houses that you make available for us in the name of decent habitation for human beings violate our children’s and our right to privacy. These spatially constricting houses are too expensive for us to keep. We keep them only to receive rent from them. Long live your foresight which fills mother earth with greenhouses of swelling discontent. So, we return to our mekhukhu, favelas, and matyotyombe not  because we would like to live like pigs, but because your economic system considers our right to exist to be lower than that of pigs. We live now. We are not  a lifeless statistic attractive to the genius of the mathematician and the social scientist. We are not awaiting the verdict of the actuary who has now become the new judiciary, sentencing people to death because they become a financial burden when they live beyond their scientifically predetermined life expectancy. We are not the passive object for the plotting of your unilateral grand strategic plans promising a better life for all in an unpredictable future we may not live to see (Santos 2014: 182). We live now. We refuse for ourselves, our children, and greatest grandchildren to be pawns mortgaged in perpetuity to predator creditors promising a future now become our present hunger and poverty. We denounce this condition because it sustains the few basking in the sunshine of excessive wealth and hedonistic revelries. We have no reason to be the passive spectators to your insatiable accumulation of wealth at our expense. We refuse to be consigned to a happy death while you feast on our scientific poverty. Justice for all or none is the fundamental and primary ethical issue we stand on (Santos 2014: 42). The receiver of revenue does not notice us although stacks of our earthly belongings lie lined up against the strictly guarded walls of its awesome buildings. We neither sow nor reap, and we are unemployed, but the birds of heaven have taught us how to live on a full stomach. Mother earth continues to provide us with good health, keeping us away from medical doctors who demand money or medical insurance before they can attend to the sick. We are not patients suffering from the universal deadly epidemic of loving money: pecunimania. It kills the multitude softly or with instant brutality. Mother earth receives us when we are dead though we did not have funeral insurance when we were alive. Death the equalizer is the inevitable complement to our equality at birth. And, so, it is better to stop the search for a cinerarium for ubuntu because death is the inevitable destination of all that lives. Mother earth is the ultimate cremator and the best crematorium. Mother earth does not suffer from necrophilia, but she is the best necropolis of all that lives.

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On the Oneness of Human Beings We are the daughters and sons of mother Africa; the mother who made “the world become African” as the inscription in the national museum of Ethiopia, in Addis Ababa, states. This is corroborated by the inscription in the national museum in Hungary, Budapest: “Approximately one-one and a half million years ago, the first humans, already producing simple tools, began a journey from Africa fated to populate the World.” The  exodus (Stringer and McKie 1998) of “the first humans” out of Africa to the rest of the world establishes and affirms the oneness of human beings wherever we may be. A plea for radical qualitative difference as human beings cannot be sustained since all human beings have their ancestry from the womb of mother Africa. The African exodus is much less celebrated than the much younger exodus of the bible. Often, one hears or reads about the morbid syndrome of “Out of Africa,” there is always something new. When “the world became African” mother Africa dwelt among some of her children only as the object of libidinous nostalgia. She was raped by daylight and through the thick impenetrable darkness of the night. She continues to be oppressed and exploited. Preventable intellectual and material poverty continue to suck her to death. Thus “et verbum caro factum est, et habitavit in nobis” ( John 1: 14) was complemented by the violent implementation of the Petrine Commission: “thou art Peter and upon this rock I shall build my church” (Mudimbe 1988: 45). From time immemorial, the Bantu-speaking peoples lived and continue to live, among others, in Bathonia. It was renamed South Africa by the power of the sword wielded wildly and blindly by our accidentally alienated brothers and sisters. Their “his-story” consigns the Khoi and San peoples to “pre-history” allowing them to grow like grass from the black fertile soil of Bathonia. We are equal in our humanness to any other human being. This is precisely what the conqueror continues to ignore in practice in South Africa. The indigenous peoples of Bathonia continue to resist this because their legal philosophy holds that Molato ga o bole (Sesotho), Ondjo kai uoro (Herero), Mhosva haiori (Shona), and Ityala ali boli (Xhosa), meaning that an injury or an injustice ought to be remedied regardless of the time it takes. Memory is an integral part of this legal philosophy. We have no desire to be squatters in Kakania (Santos 2014: 12), the capital city of planet Earth. Yet, we are prohibited from even dreaming to be its citizens because we have no Excrementia (Santos 2014: 8) to offer. We shall never renounce our sovereign title to the territory bequeathed to us by our forebears from time immemorial. This resolve to regain title to territory is a crucial first step in advancing the cause of total and comprehensive renunciation of sovereign title to territory and private property (Populorum Progressio pars. 23, 24 and 34) for the sake of justice and peace. The “moon treaty” of 1979 (UNGA 1979) is a laudable example illustrating that lunatic reasoning is not dementia when it

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comes to the quest for justice and peace. In the meantime, the successors in title to colonial conquest ought to be reminded of John Locke’s warning that: “it is plain that he that conquers in an unjust war can thereby have no title to the subjection and obedience of the conquered” (Locke 1690, Ch. XVI). For us, the struggle for the restoration of sovereign title to territory is a moment in the transition to justice and peace on a global scale.

Batho kamoka re a lekana Motho ga a gona yo a kileng a ikgethela go tla lefatsheng. Re lekana ka gore re no ba mo lefatsheng re sa ikgethela go ba gona. Tokelo ye ya goba gona lefatsheng e sepedisana le gore motho mang le mang o a kgona ebile o a inaganela kwa ntle ga go kgopela tumelelo ya yo mongwe motho. Yo ke wona motheo wa gore batho kamoka re a lekana. Ka fao ra re go ba ntshe lefatsheng le go kgona go nagana ke tokelo ya motho mang goba mang. Etse re tshwanetse go tseba gore motho bjaleka ge re mo tseba lehono o tlholega mabung a Afrika. Tlhago e tlhotse bofaladi go tswa Afrika gomme ya tlisa diphetogo tse dintshi go tshwana le gore mebala ya letlalo la motho e ile ya fapafapana le dipolelo ke tse dintshi kudu. Batsebi ba laodisa gore go nale le botlhatse bja gore le tsona dipolelo tse dintshi tse di nale le modu yo tee gona mo Afrika. Na le ile la ipotsisa gore go tla bjang gore dinaga tse di leng kgole magareng ga tsona di be le mafelelo a go tshwana bjaleka: Ethiop-ia, Alban-ia, Boliv-ia, Thuring-ia, Austral-ia, Syr-ia, Pennsylvan-ia, Croat-ia, Malays-ia, Lithuan-ia, Russ-ia, Tanzan-ia, Bosn-ia, Tunis-ia, Colomb-ia, Mongol-ia, Alger-ia, Serb-ia, Latv-ia, Liber-ia, Sardin-ia, Niger-ia, Ind-ia, Moral-ia, Indones-ia, Armen-ia, Mauritan-ia? Afrika ke mmabatho kamoka lefatsheng le ge re fapafapana ka mekgwa, setso esita le mmala wa letlalo. Tlaisego magareng ga rena e no ba e sa nyakege ka gore re makala le diengwa tsa modu wa motlhare wo tee. Go bakisana ga rena le makgowa go fitlhela lehono ke go ba lemosa gore seo se tlhokagalang magareng ga rena ke kagisano yeo e tlhomphang e bile e obamelang toka le khutso.

Senzeni na? Bothata ke gore ba gona batho bao ba latolang tokelo ya goba gona lefatsheng. Batho ba ke makgowa. Ba rile go thopa dinaga tsa Afrika ka dikgoka ba tswelela ba dira bana ba thari makgoba. Go ya ka bona, mothupi o nale tokelo ya go laela le go laola bathopja ka mokgwa yo yena a ratang. Aowa, rena bana ba thari e sale re ganana le “tokelo ya mothupi.” Setshaba gase no thopelwa naga yaba se no homola se re go lokile go lekane. Tshomiso ya maatla a “tokelo ya mothupi” e namile ya dira bana ba thari ya Afrika makgoba a mmele le moya; makgoba a go naganelwa a ganetswa go inaganela. Tsebo e namile ya ba tsebo go ya ka thato le taelo ya mothupi. Bathupi ba ba makgowa ba agile,

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ka kgapeletso, legora go tlhoma phapano magareng ga bana ba thari ya Afrika le bona. Re tshwanetse go kwisisa gore gase legora le tee leo le agilweng, ke a mantshi. A mangwe ke a. Legora la go laetsa gore batho ke bona fela. Legora le le namile la ba bulela tsela ya go tlema le go disa bana ba thari ya Afrika bjalo ka makgoba go fitlhela lehono. Legora le la gore batho ke makgowa fela, le tlogile le somiswa go aga le lengwe. Lona ke legora la bahumanehi le bahumi. Mokgwa wa bona wa go phedisana gase letsema. Aowa, ke semphete-ke-go-fete lehumo le botlhokwa go feta bophelo bja motho. Mokgwa wo wa phedisano o ganetsana le wa seAfrika wo re tsebang o re: feta kgomo o tshware motho. Makgowa ga a kwane le ga tee le mokgwa wo. Erile mmusi wa Tanzania Julius Nyerere a re o theya phedisano nageng ya gabo ya Tanzania ka wona mokgwa wa setso – o bitswa Ujama ka segagabo, makgowa a mo tlhokisa boroko. Ujamaa e nabile Afrika. Ka seIbo nageng ya Nigeria ke Umunna, ka seSwahili kua nageng ya Kenya ke Harambee, nageng ya Ethiopia ke debo ka polelo ya seOromo goba guza ka polelo ya seAmharic mola kua Ghana o tsebja ka obra ye nnoba ka polelo ya seAkana. Geso Afrika-Borwa ke ubuntu wona motheo wa letsema. Maikemisetso a makgowa a dinaga tsa Bodikela go lwantsha letsema ke ona a ileng a tlisa kago ya legora leo le arogantshang dinaga tse le dinaga tsa Botlhaba tsatsi. Ntwa ka ntle ga tshollo ya madi magareng ga diripa tse pedi tse tsa lefatshe e fitlhile mo e leng gore bjale go na le dibetsa tseo di ka fisang lefathse kamoka lorelore gomme tsa bolaya le bona beng bja tsona. Dibetsa tse di swerwe ke dinaga tse pedi, Russia le Amerika. Dinaga tse pedi tse di sa tshwere dibetsa tse gomme di tshosetsana ka tsona gore go be le kgotso magareng ga bona le lefatsheng ka bophara. Kgotso ye e dio rothela ganenyane lefatsheng ka gore dintwa tse dintshi di sa no ba gona lefatsheng ebile wona mafatshe a mabedi a a di tsenatsene. Seo se tlhokagalang ka tshoganetso ke go fediswa fedifedi ga dibetsa tse e le lona legato la go fedisa “dintwa le matshwenyego” Afrika le lefatsheng ka bophara.

Tatelano le nyepo ya melaotheo ya Afrika-Borwa Go tlhoka botho le meharo ke tsona motheo wa phedisano ya semphete kego-fete: lehumo le botlhokwa go feta bophelo bja motho. Phuthulogo ya molaotheo wa Afrika Borwa ya bathupi go fitlhela lehono e laetsa gore banye mabu ba be ba gopolwa fela ka maemo a bona a go somiswa go kgoboketsa lehumo lesakeng la bathupi. Banye mabu ba be ba sena lentsu godima ga tshepediso ya maphelo a bona. Kgoro ya go dira melao e be e le ya makgowa fela. Makgowa a ile a mema bana ba moloko ma “Colored” le maIndia go tsena kgorong eupja ka mokgwa wa go tsewletsa pele tlhabologo go ya ka magoro. Molaotheong yo wa 1983, barena e be e sano ba bona makgowa. Nakong ye kamoka, banye mabu ba be ba fela ba bitswa, “native” gosasa “non-Europeans”

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lehono “Bantu.” Molao wa banye mabu o be o le ka mafuri gomme le bjale ka diphetogo tsa 1994 o tloga o le ka mafuri. Molao wo o rutwang gona kua didibeng tsa dithuto tseo diphagameng, o tloga o gatelela gabotse gore molao wa bathupi ke wona ngkwethe. Dipolelo-polelo tsa baatlhodi dikgorong tsa tsheko mabapi le botho e dio ba dikgabisa polelo. Botho gase lentsu le le tswelelang le ga tee mo molaotheong yo wa 108 1996. Gase taba ya gore botho bo lebetswe. Bothata ke gore botho bo kwisisa gabotse gore molato ga o bole. Go leng bjale, bathupi ba tla tshwanela ke go busetsa naga go beng gore go boledisanwe gabotse ka phedisano ye e theilweng godimo ga “feta kgomo o tshware motho.” Go kgonthisa kganetso ya bona ya phedisano ya botho, bathupi ba namile bare aowa, go tloga lehono ge bathopja le bona ba tsena kgorong, gona re tla latlha motheo wa gore sephetho sa kgoro ke sona gomang ka nna. Go dira bjalo ke gore kgoro e lego yona moemedi le lentsu la batho e tla no bolela ya tsea diphetho eupja diphetho tse di ka ganetswa tsa be tsa gafelwa thoko ke molaotheo. Ka bjalo molaotheo yo mofsa wona o re ke wona o nang le maatla a go neya taelo ya mafelelo-felelo. Yela yeso ya gore kgosi ke kgosi ka batho e tla no ba leseganyana go ya go ile le tataiswa ke wona molaotheo. Gase rena kamoka bana ba thari ya Afrika re dumelelanang le phetogo ye ya gore molaotheo e be wona gomang ka nna. Nnete ke gore bao ba kgethilweng go ya kgorong ke barongwa bao ba tshwanetseng go kwisisa gore lentsu la batho ke lona gomang ka nna. Kgosi ke kgosi ka batho.

In Search of a Cinerarium for Ubuntu In this section, I will focus on the attempt to find a cinerarium for ubuntu even before the Bantu peoples have been cremated. For  ethical and “his-storical” reasons concerning South Africa, the Bantu peoples, the Khoi, and the San peoples together with the “Coloreds” and the Indians are all regarded here as the conquered peoples of South Africa. This designation will be used whenever it is consistent with the context. Otherwise, the Bantu peoples will be specifically referred to. Primary focus will be upon law in South Africa, particularly the evolution of constitutional law. The core argument here is that since the conquest of the indigenous peoples of South Africa, “South African law” continues to be the synonym of the law of the conqueror. In spite of this, ubuntu is the living philosophy of the conquered peoples. The  continual attempted epistemicides (Santos 2014) continue to be used by the conqueror to portray the false picture that ubuntu is long dead and cremated giving rise to the need to search for a cinerarium to preserve its ashes. Against this we argue that ubuntu has survived the multiple attempted epistemicides. The  conqueror’s claim that ubuntu is dead can be true only if all the Bantu peoples

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inside  and outside of South Africa are actually exterminated. For  as long as this is not the case, then the conqueror is in search of a cinerarium for uncremated ubuntu. The Union of South Africa was the exclusive colonial all-conqueror union subject to the sovereignty of the United Kingdom. The conquered peoples of South Africa were treated as politically irrelevant and thus had no say in determining their economic, cultural, and social life. A  study of the 1961, 1983, 1993, as well as the 1996 constitutions of South Africa reflects the successive, uninterrupted implementation of this logic of exclusion. Also, the academic institutions in South Africa continue to uphold the primacy of the epistemological paradigm of the conqueror. I now turn to illustrate this by reference to legal studies.

The Academy and Law in South Africa—The Leitmotif of Exclusion It appears that the authors of The South African Legal System and Its Background, Hahlo and Kahn (1968), were inspired by the so-called right of conquest (Ramose 2003) in the writing of their book. The  book comprises of two parts. “The second part provides a first-rate introduction to the legal history of Holland and South Africa” (Honoré 1969: 800). Why “Holland” when the point of focus is South Africa? Because the Dutch invaded and conquered in an unjust war the indigenous peoples of South Africa (Troup 1972: 53). What then is the content of the law of “South Africa?” For an answer to this we turn to yet another reviewer of the book. Stein observes that: the concluding chapter is devoted to Roman-Dutch law in South Africa. Here the authors write with easy authority and fluency of thesis, the eighteenth-century law of the Dutch East India Company, antithesis, the English influence during the nineteenth century, and synthesis, the South Africa law developed since 1910. (1970: 148) Here, we are directed even outside of “Holland” to the Roman empire. Thus, it is Roman-Dutch law which is an integral part of the legal “background” of conqueror South Africa. Accordingly, it is not difficult to understand why in the past the study of Latin was compulsory in the study of law in South Africa. Also, it is clear why Dutch jurists such as Grotius were considered as authorities in the validation and elucidation of the law of conqueror South Africa. Knowledge of Latin has formally been abolished for the study of the law of conqueror South Africa. However, the legal epistemological paradigm is retained and endures. It is the dominant legal paradigm in the study and application of law in South Africa.

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Legislation pertaining to the Bantu peoples was titled “native,” like the Native Land Act of 1913.1 The  terminology of “Natives” and “Europeans” was used for a long time. It  was terminated when the conqueror apparently recognized that “natives” had strong connotations of title to territory and thus acknowledged the Bantu peoples as the rightful owners of South Africa. The designation “European” emphasized this by virtue of depicting the conqueror as an outsider from Europe. It  was therefore necessary to abolish the “Native” “European” divide in order to affirm the validity and the irreversibility of the “right of conquest.” The law of the conqueror in South Africa is conceived as a “system”: a structure comprising of functional units co-ordinated to serve one or more purposes. This concept of system is reminiscent of the grand philosophical systems. Stein’s description of the book in terms of “thesis, antithesis, and synthesis” calls to mind in particular Hegel’s philosophical system. According to Hegel’s philosophy of history (Hegel 1975: 25), sub-Saharan Africa cannot belong to history, let alone his blindly conjectured teleology of history (Hegel 1956: 99). The point here is to suggest that in the same way as Hegel excluded sub-Saharan Africa from the compass of his contrived speculative history, so the authors of The South African Legal System and Its Background excluded the Bantu peoples and, thus, ubuntu from the “legal system” of conqueror South Africa. The Republic of South Africa Act No. 32 of 1961 was the conquerors only constitution. In  addition to this, it had three other main features. The  first was that it claimed to be founded upon the religious belief that the Christian “God” offered South Africa as a gift to the conqueror. “In Humble submission to Almighty God, Who controls the destinies of nations and the history of peoples; Who gathered our forebears together from many lands and gave them this their own…” The posterity of the colonial conqueror freely acknowledge that, historically, they originate from “many lands” outside of South Africa. Today, some of them hold dual citizenship by virtue of ancestry outside of South Africa. In declaring South Africa a “God-given land,” the preamble to this constitution brought to the fore its second feature, namely, that the “God” of the conqueror sanctioned the unjust wars of colonization. Two well-known and distinctly militaristic Christian songs attest to this. One is “Onward Christian soldiers.” Another song, found in the Roman Catholic Church hymn books is “Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus, Christus imperat:” “Christ conquers, Christ reigns, Christ commands.” The hymn goes under the title: Ahe! Ahe! Kriste morena, in Sesotho. The  hymn is silent on whether or not  the conquest of Christ takes place in a just or unjust war. But we know that Dum Diversas, the bull of Pope Nicolas V, explicitly sanctioned disseizing and killing if the prospective converts refused to become Christians (Mudimbe 1988: 45). It is, therefore, doubtful if the Christian “God” could ever become “a human rights activist” (Santos 2015).

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The third feature was that the constitution was republican by character, underlining the conqueror’s only agreement to abolish the sovereignty of the United Kingdom over conqueror South Africa (Wiechers 1967: 248; Ramose 2005). The fourth feature was that it also acknowledged parliamentary supremacy as the basic constitutional principle. The 1961 constitution abrogated the right of the conquered peoples to self-determination. It regarded them as an incidental footnote subject to manipulation and control by the conqueror. This encouraged the long drawn continuation of resistance by the conquered peoples of South Africa. The 1983 constitution—Republic of South Africa Constitution Act 110 of 1983—was contrived as a response to this resistance. The  1983 constitution retained the feature of parliamentary supremacy. It contained two new elements. The first is that South Africa was comprised of three population groups, namely, the “Whites,” the “Coloreds,” and the Indians. The apartheid of this new feature was underlined by the concepts of “own” and “plural” affairs. In the sphere of “plural” affairs, the “Coloreds” and Indians were elevated to the status of honorary co-conquerors. Within the domain of “own” affairs, each population group had the latitude for selfgovernment. The  second new element of this constitution is that it defined South Africa as “a racial federation” (Booysen and Van Wyk 1984: 45) in apparent inadvertent acknowledgment that neither the “Coloreds” nor the Indians could be assigned a territory truly their “own” in South Africa. This recognition has special significance because in the “new” political dispensation of South Africa, the “whites” demanded and were granted an exclusive territory for themselves, namely, Orania: a country within the country South Africa. The “racial federation” of the 1983 constitution ignored the existence of the Bantu peoples. It was yet another practical implementation of the conqueror’s logic of exclusion. The 1993 constitution is regarded as the “bridge” or “transition” constitution. The underlying idea here is that this was a constitution to enable the passage from the old to the “new” South Africa. The “new” South Africa would then deliver the “final” constitution. This indeed happened with the enactment of the Republic of South Africa Constitution Act 108 of 1996. One of the features of the 1993 constitution is that it substituted the principle of parliamentary supremacy with that of constitutional supremacy. Justification for this substitution is found in the claim that laws made by parliament must be checked by the courts to ensure that they are consistent with the recognition, protection, and promotion of human rights (Dugard 1990a, 1990b). Some adherents to this refer to the famous Harris case2 as an example showing the powerlessness of the courts to declare manifestly unjust laws invalid. A few observations are in order with regard to this justification. The first is the question why parliamentary supremacy was deemed to be suitable for conqueror South Africa in the constitutional history of the country

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prior to 1993. It must be recalled that even within the camp of the conqueror there were voices of reason bent on justice declaring the necessity for constitutional supremacy (Davenport 1960: 13). The reply to this was indifference. Second, there is no necessary contradiction between parliamentary supremacy and democracy on the one hand, and the upholding of human rights on the other (Campbell 1980). The unwritten constitution of the United Kingdom is a living example of this even after the legal incorporation of a bill of human rights (Malleson 2011: 752). Democracy is a means, but not an end. It is not necessarily served best by what is written about it (Mancini 1998: 41). What is decisive is what the people under a democratic dispensation do (Weiler 1998: 97). Third, the reference to the Harris cases is unconvincing because it is analogous to the argument that the bible should be discarded in South Africa because it was used as the source for apartheid. The same bible was used, for example, as the source of black and liberation theologies that contributed toward the abolition of apartheid. Susceptibility to abuse is not a sufficient reason for the substitution of parliamentary with constitutional supremacy. Was it not an abuse of the constitution of the United States of America when its Supreme Court held that slavery was consistent with the constitution? It was indeed the Fourteenth Amendment—equal protection clause—which nullified the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision in which it was held that “the negro African race was regarded by the framers of the Constitution as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”3 Thus, a constitution is not by definition ethical. Even if a constitution may recognize the right to equality, it does not necessarily follow that the recognition confers substantive equality to all. Formal equality is not  necessarily the best response to justice (Westen 1982: 547–548). The  transition from parliamentary to constitutional supremacy is no guarantee that a bill of rights actualizes substantive rights. It is also not an automatic remedy for historic titles abrogated by injustice. Another feature of the 1993 constitution is that it contained the word Ubuntu, but only in the post-amble discussing the future legalization on “national unity” subsequently enacted as the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act, in 1995.4 I have written extensively on this point elsewhere (Ramose 2012). Here, I will limit myself to the following points. First, the “promotion” in the name of the Act must be properly understood as imposition, since the law imposed the obligation to work toward “national unity and reconciliation.” Secondly, the legal obligation to forge “national unity” served as the precursor of the opportunistic deployment of ubuntu to achieve ethically dubious goals in the name of peace in the country: a peace based on legally defined truth. The truth of the law with regard to “national unity” required “full disclosure” of one’s involvement in political activity. The “full disclosure” served as a warrant for amnesty exonerating one from prosecution. In this way, even justice

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according to law was overridden. Thirdly, although the word “truth” is absent from the title of the Act, it is significant that the Commission established under the Act was popularly known as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It is also significant that the word justice did not form part of the title of the Act. Yet, many Christian church bodies in South Africa did at the time have “Justice and Reconciliation” departments. Another feature of the 1993 constitution is that it contained a bill of rights characterized by the questionable classification and hierarchization of human rights (Bokor-Szego 1991). The problem with this is that it is based on the historical experience of one segment of humanity which insists on translating this experience into the experience of all humanity. If human rights are so “universal,” why is it that colonialism as a crime against humanity (Schwelb 1946: 178, 195) leads to only one reaction from the colonizer, namely, the adamant refusal to pay reparations to the colonized? If human rights are so “universal,” why is it that as a member of the five nation western contact group—Germany—refused to entertain the ethical demand to pay reparations to the future Namibia because of the genocide committed by the German General Von Trotha and his army upon the peoples of South West Africa? Why is it that Germany, without any legal obligation assumed the noble moral stance to pay reparations (Honig 1954) to Israel, but refused to maintain the same noble moral stance with regard to Namibia? Why should it be enough for Africa to be satisfied with the belated, but welcome apology for colonization and the slave trade made by Pope John Paul II in 1992? (Bujo 1992: 6). These questions suggest that practice in international politics reveals that “human rights” are defined as “universal” on the basis of power relations and not  truth: auctoritas non  veritas facit legem. In  view of this, the transition from parliamentary to constitutional supremacy in South Africa may not be considered unreservedly to have been a move intended to uphold the truth that all human beings are equal in their humanity. The 1996 constitution is the apex of the logic of exclusion in both epistemic and social terms. The  widening gap between the rich and the poor shows that economic liberation is yet to be attained in South Africa and, globally, for all.

Conclusion The right to exist and to reason is for all human beings. Reason is not a donation from any human being. It manifests itself as the practical unfolding struggle between good and evil, truth, and justice. Law is born of reason, but reason is not  the creature of law. Thus, reason resists any attempt to contain and restrict it within any religious belief or political ideology. I have shown that the pursuit of the logic of exclusion by the successors in title to colonization speaks to the ethical exigency of epistemic and social justice. It  is therefore

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futile to search for a cinerarium for ubuntu. Ubuntu as the ethics of “promote life and avoid killing” shall not  die even if all the Bantu peoples shall, by a mysterious human act, be totally and completely obliterated from planet Earth. At  that mysterious moment there shall be no one trying to find the cinerarium for uncremated ubuntu.

Notes 1 2 3 4

Native Land Act No. 27, of 1913. See Harris v. Minister of the Interior (1952) (2) SA 428 (A). Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 US (19 How.) 393 (1857). Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act No. 34, of 1995.

References Beder, Sharon (2010), “Business managed democracy: The  trade agenda”, Critical Social Policy, 30(4), 496–518. doi:10.1177/0261018310376803. Bello, A. G. A. (2011), Introduction to Logic. Ibadan: University Press PLC. Bohm, David (1971), “Fragmentation in science and society”, in W. Fuller (ed.), The Social Impact of Modern Biology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 24–39. Bohm, David (1993), The Undivided Universe. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Bohm, David (1994), Thought as a System. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Bohman, James, and Kelly, Terrence (1996), “Intelligibility, rationality and comparison”, Philosophy and Social Criticism, 22(1), 81–100. doi:10.1177/019145379602200105. Bokor-Szego, Hanna (1991), “The classification of certain types of human rights and the development of constitutions”, in H. Bokor-Szego (ed.), Questions of International Law, Hungarian Perspectives,Volume 5. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 19–44. Booysen, Hercules, and Van Wyk, D. (1984), Die’83 grondwet. Cape Town: Juta & Kie. Bujo, Benezet (1992), African Theology in its Social Context. Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa. Translated by J. O’Donohue. Campbell, Colin M. (ed.) (1980), Do We Need a Bill of Rights? London: Temple Smith. Cantore, Enrico (1977), Scientific Man: The Humanistic Significance of Science. New York: ISH Publications. Collier, Paul (2008), The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done about It. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davenport, T. R. H. (1960), “Civil rights in South Africa, 1910–1960”, 1960 Acta Juridica, 11–28. Dugard, John (1990a), “Towards a democratic legal order for South Africa”, African Journal of International and Comparative Law, 2, 361–383. Dugard, John (1990b), “A bill of rights for South Africa?” Cornell International Law Journal, 23(3), 441–466. Dussel, Enrique (1985), Philosophy of Liberation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Translated by A. Martinez e C. Morkovsky. Escobar, Arturo (2007), “Worlds and knowledges otherwise”, Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 179–210. doi:10.1080/09502380601162506. Feyerabend, Paul K. (1975), Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge. London: New Left Books.

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Foucault, Michel (1970), The  Order of Things. London: Tavistock. Translated by R. D. Lang. Grosfoguel, Ramón (2007), “The  epistemic decolonial turn”, Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 211–223. doi:10.1080/09502380601162514. Gutierrez, Gustavo (1983), The Power of the Poor in History. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Translated by Robert R. Barr. Hahlo, H. R., and Kahn, Ellison (1968), The South African Legal System and Its Background. Cape Town: Juta & Co. Hawking, Stephen, and Mlodinow, Leonard (2011), The  Grand Design. London: Bantam Books. Healy, Paul (1998), “Dialogue across boundaries: On discursive conditions necessary for a ‘politics of recognition’”, Res Publica, 4(1), 59–76. doi:10.1007/BF02334933. Healy, Paul (2000), “Self-other relations and the rationality of cultures”, Philosophy and Social Criticism, 26(6), 61–83. doi:10.1177/019145370002600604. Healy, Paul (2011), “Rethinking deliberative democracy: From deliberative discourse to transformative dialogue”, Philosophy and Social Criticism, 37(3), 295–311. doi:10.1177/0191453710389439. Hegel, G. W. F. (1956), The Philosophy of History. New York: Dover Publications. Translated by J. Sibree. Hegel, G. W. F. (1975), Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Translated by H. B. Nisbet. Honig, Frederick (1954), “The  reparations agreement between Israel and the Federal Republic of Germany”, American Journal of International Law, 48(4), 564–578. doi:10.2307/2195023. Honoré, A. M. (1969), “Review of H. H. Hahlo, and Ellison Kahn ‘The South African Legal System and Its Background’”, International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 18, 799–800. doi:10.1093/iclqaj/18.3.799. Huizinga, Johan (1955), Homo ludens a Study of the Play Element in Culture. London: Routledge. Kimmerle, Heinz, and van Rappard, Hans (2011), Afrika en China in Dialog. Garant: Antwerpen-Appeldoorn. Locke, John (1690), Two Treatises of Government. Available at www.johnlocke.net/twotreatises-of-government-book-i, accessed in April 2016. Lukacs, György (1980), The Ontology of Social Being: Vol. 3 – Labour. London: Merlin Press. Translated by D. Fernbach. Malleson, Kate (2011), “The  evolving role of the UK Supreme Court”, Public Law, 4, 754–772. Mancini, G. Federico (1998), “Europe: The case for statehood”, European Law Journal, 4(1), 29–42. doi:10.1111/1468–0386.00041. McCarthy, Thomas (1992), “Doing the right thing in cross-cultural representation”, Ethics, 102(3), 635–649. Mignolo, Walter D., and Tlostanova, Madina V. (2006), “Theorizing from the borders: Shifting to geo- and body-politics of knowledge”, European Journal of Social Theory, 9(2), 205–221. doi:10.1177/1368431006063333. Mudimbe,Valetin I. (1988), The Invention of Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Prigogine, Ilya (1985), Order Out of Chaos, Man’s Dialogue with Nature. London: Fontana. Ramose, Mogobe B. (2002), African Philosophy through Ubuntu. Harare: Mond Books Publishers.

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Ramose, Mogobe B. (2003), “I conquer, therefore, I am the sovereign: Reflections upon sovereignty, constitutionalism and democracy in Zimbabwe and South Africa”, in P. H. Coetzee and A. P. J. Roux (eds.), The African Philosophy Reader. London: Routledge, 463–500. Ramose, Mogobe B. (2005), “The philosophy of the Anglo-Boer war”, in Ina Snyman et al. (eds.), A Century Is a Short Time: New Perspectives on the Anglo-Boer War. Pretoria: Nexus Editorial Collective, 11–24. Ramose, Mogobe B. (2012), “Reconciliation and reconfiliation in South Africa”, Journal on African Philosophy, 5, 20–39. Russell, Bertrand (1935), In  Praise of Idleness and Other Essays. London: George Allen  & Unwin. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2014), Epistemologies of the South. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2015), If God Were a Human Rights Activist. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Schwelb, Egon (1946), “Crimes against humanity”, British Year Book of International Law, 23, 178–181. Smith, Linda T. (1999), Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books. Sobrino, Jon (1988), Spirituality of Liberation:Toward Political Holiness. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Translated by R. R. Barr. Stein, P. (1970), “Review of ‘The  South African legal system and Its background’”, Cambridge Law Journal, 28(1), 146–148. doi:10.1017/S0008197300011697. Stringer, Chris, and McKie, Robin (1998), African Exodus:The Origins of Modern Humanity. New York: Henry Holt & Company. Troup, Freda (1972), South Africa. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. UNGA – United Nations General Assembly (1979), The Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and other Celestial Bodies  [UNGAR 34/68, 1979]. Available at www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/moon-agreement.html (accessed June 2017). Weiler, Joseph H. H. (1998), “Europe: The case against the case for statehood”, European Law Journal, 4(1), 43–62. doi:10.1111/1468–0386.00042. Westen, Peter (1982), “The empty idea of equality”, Harvard Law Review, 95(3), 537–596. doi:10.2307/1340593. Wiechers, Marinus (1967), Staatsreg. Durban: Butterworths.

5 PROBLEMATIC PEOPLE AND EPISTEMIC DECOLONIZATION Toward the Postcolonial in Africana Political Thought Lewis R. Gordon

Introduction The relationship between the West and the rest in political thought has been one of the constructions of the world in which the latter have been located outside and thus, literally, without a place on which to stand. Hidden parenthetical adjectives of “European,” “Western,” and “white” have been the hallmarks of such reflection on political reality and the anthropology that informs it. For the outsiders, explicit adjectival techniques of appearance thus became the rule of the day, as witnessed by, for instance, “African,” “Asian,” or “Native,” among others, as markers of their subaltern status in the supposedly wider disciplines. The  role of these subcategories is, however, not  a static one, and as historical circumstances shift, there have been ironic reversals in their various roles. In  the case of (Western and white) liberal political theory, for instance, the commitment to objectivity by way of the advancement of a supposedly valueneutral moral and political agent stood as the universal in an age in which such a formulation did not face its own cultural specificity. Where the parenthetical adjective is made explicit by critics of liberal political theory, such a philosophy finds itself in the face of its own cultural particularity, and worse: it finds itself so without having done its homework on that world that transcends its particularity. On the one hand, liberal and other forms of Western political theory could engage that other world for the sake of its own rigor or, more generously, rigor in general. But such an approach carries the danger of simply systemic adjustment and application; it would, in other words, simply be a case of re-centering the West by showing how the non-West offers ways of strengthening Western thought, much like the argument used in elite universities, that the presence of children of color will enhance the education of white children.

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On the other hand, there could be the realization of the ongoing presence of the non-Western in the very advancement of the Western. Just as the assertion of “white” requires the dialectical opposition of black (as the absence of white), the coherent formulation of Western qua itself requires its suppressed or repressed terms. Modern Western discussions of freedom require meditations on slavery that become more apparent in their displacements: think of how slavery in the ancient Greek world has received more attention from Western political thinkers, with few exceptions such as Marx and Sartre, than the forms of enslavement that have marked the modern world.1 Yet even here there is a misrepresentation in terms of the very structure of exclusion itself. The “outsider” is, after all, paradoxically also an “insider.” For alongside white Western political thinkers have always been their Africana counterparts, hybrids of the Western and other worlds, who, in their criticisms and innovations, expanded the meaning and scope of the West. Anton Wilhelm Amo, the Asante-born philosopher who was educated in the Dutch and German systems and eventually taught at the University of Halle, offered not only his readings of international law and questions of political equality in the eighteenth century, but he also challenged the mind-body dichotomy that informed its insider-outsider political anthropology.2 The Fantiborn Ottobah Cugoano, in similar kind and in the same century, brought this question of insider-outsider to the fore in his discussion of the theodicy that dominated Christian rationalizations of slavery and racism.3 Theodicy, which explains the goodness of an omnipotent God in the face of evil and injustice, is often identified by Africana (African Diaspora) thinkers as a hallmark of (white) Western political thought.4 Even where the (white) thinker is admitting the injustice of the system and showing how it could be made good, the logic of ultimate goodness is inscribed in the avowed range of the all-enveloping alternative system. Such a new system’s rigor requires, in effect, the elimination of all outsiders by virtue of their assimilation. This is a paradox of the question of systemic self-criticism: in such an effort stands the potential completeness of a system through its incompleteness, its ongoing susceptibility to inconsistency, error, and, at times, injustice. What this means is that making a system more rigorous is not necessarily a good thing. The result could be a complete injustice avowed as the culmination of justice. The “role” of the Africana political thinker, then, requires doing more. In one sense, the role of the Africana political thinker is no different from the traditional Western thinker, which is the articulation of thought with which one struggles in the political world. But in another sense, the Africana role involves bringing to the fore those dimensions of thought rendered invisible by virtue of the questioned legitimacy of those who formulate them. Such thought faces a twofold path. The first is the question of recognition. If it is a matter of recognition by those who have traditionally excluded them, then the logic of that group as the center is affirmed, which would make such contribution, albeit

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of great interest, conservative.5 The second is an appeal to reality beyond questions of centered recognition. Here, the project is to articulate political reality itself, which entails a criticism of the centered standpoint and its own particularity: The centered standpoint is a false representation of reality. The task then faced by the Africana Western political thinker becomes manifold: (1) since the modern political world has formulated non-Western humanity, particularly indigenous Africa and the indigenous peoples of the New Worlds, as sub- or even non-human, a philosophical anthropology as the grounding of social and political change freed of dehumanizing forces is necessary; (2) since thought does not float willy-nilly, but requires an infrastructure on which to appear and become consequential, creative work on building such infrastructures, which includes the kinds of political institutions necessary for their flourishing, is necessary; and (3) meta-reflection on the process of such inquiry is needed if ideas themselves are to meet the test of scrutiny. In  my own work on Africana philosophy (Gordon 2000, 2008), I have explored how contemporary Africana philosophy, as a hybrid of thought from the African Diaspora in the modern world, offers a set of challenging questions and innovative responses with which humanity should grapple. These efforts involve showing the importance of phenomenology in political theory and, in effect, the importance of Africana philosophy in phenomenology. In this chapter, I offer an outline of the argument that undergirds this work through an exploration of how the modern construction of problem people and the epistemic structure that supports such a category are theorized by W.E.B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon. After outlining their positions, I will offer a discussion of how their innovative understanding of epistemological colonialism— at the semantic and syntactic levels (i.e., even at the level of method and methodology)—addresses the tasks of philosophical anthropology, infrastructural conditions, and metareflective critique raised here.

What Does It Mean to Be a Problem? Du Bois, in The Souls of Black Folk (1982), posed this insight into the condition of black folk at first through the subjectivist formulation of how does it feel to be a problem. His own meditations on problematization had begun a few years earlier when he composed The Study of the Negro Problems (1898), namely, that groups of people are studied as problems instead of as people with problems. The result is the emergence of “problem people,” and since the logical course of action toward problems is their resolution, their elimination, then the fate of problem people is unfortunately grim. It  is significant that Du Bois formulated this problem experientially and eventually hermeneutically, from how does it feel to be a problem to, in Darkwater (Du Bois 1920), the meaning of suffering wrought by it. Matthews (2005) has argued that the roots of this reflection are located in the thought

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of Wilhelm Dilthey, who, along with Husserl (1965), offered a phenomenological approach to the study of modern humanity. Phenomenology examines the constitution of meaning from conscious reality. Dilthey and his European intellectual descendants, who include Karl Jaspers, were keen on the understanding of the human sciences as fundamentally more interpretive than exact. It was a concern that was rife in nineteenth-century European thought, which included Max Weber’s efforts at creating rigorous social science and Bergson’s concerns with the relations of mind to matter and the articulation of awareness and durationality, much of which converged in the thought of Alfred Schutz in Vienna in the 1920s. In the USA, these concerns were advanced in the thought of Du Bois, but we should bear in mind that the questions that brought Du Bois to such social theoretical reflection preceded his doctoral Teutonic encounters in Germany. He was, after all, animated by a realization that although he shared the social world of the white Other, his reaching out was weighted down with an air of transgression. Ordinary activities in that social world were displaced when he attempted to occupy the anonymous roles that made them possible. For he was not simply a student and then a professor; he was not simply a man and then a citizen. Being black, he found himself as an adjectival problematic in each instance. That his lived understanding of self as this problematic would have been a contradiction of his understanding of himself as a human being, the question of interpretation offered the hope of explanation. His situation was not, in other words, ontological; it was not about what he “is.” The situation was about how he is interpreted, about what other people think he is. The relation between meaning and being beckons him, then, in an ironic way, for in the human world, meaning collapses into being, but the latter need not have meaning. Although he did not make it explicit, Du Bois’s analysis of the situation of problem people involves an indictment of theodicean dimensions of the modern world. Theodicy, as we have seen, involves proving the compatibility between the goodness of God and the presence of evil and injustice. Malfeasance, in this view, is external to God. In the modern world, where rationalizations have been secularized, the role of God is replaced by systems that are asserted as deontological or absolute. The goodness of the system means that evil and injustice are extrasystemic. Problem people, then, are extrasystemic; they belong outside of the system. In effect, they belong nowhere, and their problems, being they themselves, mean that they cannot gain the legitimating force of recognition. It is the notion of a complete, perfect system that enables members of the system to deny the existence of problems within the system. A system that denies its incompleteness faces the constant denial of its contradictions. In the modern world, this required avowing freedom while maintaining slavery; humanism while maintaining racism; free trade through colonialism.6 Du Bois, in raising the question of the meaning of living such contradictions, of reminding modern triumphs of their dialectical underside of slavery, racism,

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and colonialism, brought forth a logic of reversals. On one level, there were the contradictions. The “universal” was, and continues to be, an over-asserted particularity. The  disciplines by which knowledge is produced often hid, by way of being presumed, a Eurocentric and racial prefix in which European and white self-reflection became the supposed story of the world. Since studying the particularized black involves understanding the relation of whiteness by which it is constituted, the scope of black particularity proved broader than the denial of white particularity. In short, the universal, should it exist, would most certainly be colored. But the logic of universal and particular is already flawed by virtue of the anxiety that should occur at the moment each human boundary appears complete. Here, Du Bois thus moves the question of problem people into their lived reality: “What does it mean to be a problem?” returns to “How does it feel to be a problem?” and becomes also “How does one live as a problem?” and in those movements, the question of the inner-life of problem people—a problem in itself since it should be self-contradictory—emerges. What can be said of the inner life of those who should lack an inner life? Du Bois, as is well known, formulated these problems as those of double consciousness. In its first stage, it involves being yoked to views from others; one literally cannot see oneself through one’s own eyes. The dialectics of recognition that follow all collapse into subordination, into living and seeing the self only through the standards and points of view of others. Without their recognition, one simply does not exist. To exist means to appear with a point of view in the intersubjective world of others. But to do so requires addressing the contradictions that militate against one’s existence in the first place. Henry (2005: 90) has described this next move as “potentiated double consciousness.” It requires that “second sight” in which the contradictions of one’s society and system of values are made bare (Henry 2005: 89). Double consciousness, in this sense, unmasks the theodicean dimensions of the system. Where the political system presents itself as all-just, as complete, the result is the abrogation of responsibility for social problems. But how could social problems exist without people who are responsible for them by virtue of being the basis of the social world itself?

Who Is Responsible for the Social World? “[Society,] unlike biochemical processes,” wrote Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks, “cannot escape human influence. Man is what brings society into being” (1967: 11). Human beings are responsible for the social world, from which and through which meaning is constructed and, consequently, new forms of life. Fanon recognized that the process of creating such forms of life also held and generated its own problems; the battle, in other words, against the colonization of knowledge, and colonizing knowledge required addressing its source at the level of method itself. Colonialism, in other words, has its methodology, and its goal requires the colonization of method itself. The battle against

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epistemological colonialism requires, then, a radical, reflective critique (as well as a radically reflective one), and so were Fanon’s efforts to assert an understanding of human behavior under a system of accommodations, a system of promised membership, resulted in failures. Announcing that he preferred to examine these failures, Fanon raised a paradoxical methodology of suspending method. To make the human being actional, his avowed aim, required showing the failures of a world in whose palms rested an ugly seed: the happy slave (Fanon 1967). That the happy slave is a project of modern freedom led Fanon to considering the contradictory implications of freedom struggles. Colonialism, for instance, raised a peculiar problem of ethics. To act “ethically” required a commitment not to harm others. But if inaction meant the continuation of a colonial situation, then the notion that harm is absent only where certain groups of people are harmed becomes the order of the day. Harm would be maintained in the interest of avoiding harm. Fanon’s insight was that this contradictory situation could not  be resolved ethically, since ethics, as with method, was here under scrutiny. Colonialism, in other words, introduced a fundamental inequality that outlawed the basis of ethics in the first place. When Fanon argues that we need to set humanity into its proper place, he means by this that this ethical problem has a political cause. In  other words, unlike the modern liberal paradigm, which seeks an ethics on which to build its politics, Fanon argues that colonialism has created a situation in which a politics is needed on which to build an ethics. I have called this, in my book Fanon and the Crisis of European Man (Gordon 1995a), the tragedy of the colonial condition. When ethics is suspended, all is permitted. And, where all is permitted, consent will become irrelevant and violence one, inevitable result. Fanon’s meditations on violence have been notorious precisely because they have been so misunderstood in this regard. As long as the ethics of colonialism—in effect, colonial ethics—dominates as ethics, then decolonization would be its enemy; it would be unethical to fight against it. This was the basis, Fanon observed, of the rationalization of colonialism as an ethical enterprise through the interpretation of the colonized as enemies of values: Native society is not simply described as a society lacking in values. It is not enough for the colonist to affirm that those values have disappeared from, or still better never existed in, the colonial world. The  native is declared insensible to ethics; he represents not only the absence of values, but also the negation of values. He is, let us dare to admit, the enemy of values, and in this sense he is the absolute evil. (Fanon 1967: 41) The “Graeco-Latin pedestal,” as Fanon calls this (1963: 46), would be an impediment to action by placing upon decolonization a neurotic situation: a condition of membership that it could not fulfill since its admission would by definition

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disqualify the club. Fanon, the psychiatrist as well as theorist of decolonization, understood that the demand of decolonization without innocent suffering fails to account for the innocence of those who suffer colonization; in effect, since innocence suffers on both accounts, it stands as an irrelevant criterion. It is perhaps this insight on the suspension of ethics that made Fanon’s concern about the inheritors of decolonization, those entrusted to forge a postcolonial reality, more than a dialectical reflection. For, just as Moses could only lead the people, but not enter the Promised Land, so, too, do the generations that fight the decolonizing struggle face their illegitimacy in the postcolonial world. The type of people who could do what needs to be done in an environment of suspended ethical commitments is not the kind who may be the best suited for the governing of mundane life. Fanon’s analysis of the national so-called postcolonial bourgeoisie is a case in point. Locked in the trap of political mediations with former colonizers, the effect of which is their becoming new colonizers, the task of building the infrastructure of their nations lay in wait, unfulfilled, and often abandoned. This seizure of the postdecolonization process leads to a yoking of national consciousness by nationalism, of making the interest of the nation collapse into the interest of groups within the nation as the nation, and a return of the political condition that precedes an ethics. Part of the liberation struggle, then, is the emancipation of ethical life.

Who Rules the World? This question, raised by Ortega y Gasset in The Revolt of the Masses (1932), gets to the point of coloniality and the question of postcoloniality and its relation to political theory. Rule, after all, is not  identical with politics. It  involves, by definition, setting standards, and the ancient relationship of priestly leaders and kings to their subjects was free of politics the extent to which fundamental inequalities had divine and cosmic foundations. Affairs between priests and each other, kings and their kind, or even priests and kings were another matter. There arose a sufficient level of equality between powers to call upon resources of rhetoric and persuasion, and it is from such a discursive transformation of conflicts that politics was born. Such activity, as its etymology suggests, is rooted in the city, a space and place that was often enclosed, if not encircled, in a way that demanded a different set of norms “inside” than “without.” Within, there is the tacit agreement that conflicts need not collapse into war, which means, in effect, the maintenance of opposition without violence, of, as the proverb goes, “war by other means.” In this case, the internal opposition afforded a relationship to the world that differed from what awaited beyond city walls. Out there was the space of violence par excellence, the abyss in which all is proverbially permitted. Ruling the polis, then, demanded a set of norms unique to such a precious place, and where rule is distributed nearly to all, the conflicts over standards require discursive safeguards.

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The  modern world has, however, been marked by the rise of rule over politics in relation to certain populations.7 Colonialism, its, in Foucauldian language, episteme (1973) and, in Mudimbe’s (1988), gnosis, renders whole populations receiving their orders, their commands, as the syntactical mode of existence itself. Standards are set, but they are done so through a logic that both denies and affirms the spirits that modernity was to hold at bay. Our analysis of Du Bois and Fanon reveals that a problem with colonialism is that it creates a structure of rule over politics in relation to the colonized. Since, as we just saw in our discussion of the roots of politics versus mere rulership, the discursive dimensions of politics properly require a sufficient level of equality between disputants, then the call for political solutions requires, as well, the construction of egalitarian institutions or places for the emergence of such relations for a political sphere. We find, then, another dimension of the ethical in relation to the political, for the political construction of egalitarian orders entails, as well, the basis for new ethical relations. In  other words, the construction of a standard that enables ethical life requires a transformation of political life as well from the violence on which it was born to the suspension of violence itself. Such a suspension would be no less than the introduction of a public realm, a place in which, and through which, opposition could occur without the structure of the command. But here we find paradox, for how could such a space exist without peripheral structures held together by force?

A Postcolonial Phenomenology The examination of consciousness and the realities born from it has spawned a variety of phenomenologies in the modern world. I am, however, here interested in examinations of consciousness that emerge from a suspension of what is sometimes called the natural standpoint, but which I prefer to call an act of ontological suspension. By suspending our ontological commitments, it is not that we have eradicated them, but that we have shifted and honed our foci. Such an act of suspension affects, as well, our presumptions, which means, as in Fanon’s reflections on epistemological colonization, that even our method cannot be presumed. One may ask about the initial moment of ontological suspension. To reintroduce an ontological commitment to a stage of our reflection would mean to presume its validity, which means that the objection requires the necessity of the suspension that it is advanced against. Such a realization is an epistemic move forward. In many ways, the term “postcolonial phenomenology” is redundant in this context, for the act of ontological suspension means that no moment of inquiry is epistemologically closed. As a rejection of epistemic closure, this form of phenomenology is pitted against colonialism precisely because such a phenomenon requires such closure, which, in more than a metaphorical sense, is the construction of epistemological “settlements.” Such settlements lead to forms of crises.

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There  are crises everywhere in the modern world, and their increase is near exponential. An odd feature of crises, however, is that they are sociogenic. Their solutions should, then, also be a function of the social world. Yet crises are lived as though they have emerged either from the heavens or out of the mechanisms of nature. Crises seem “to happen” to us. The word itself emerges from the Greek term krinein, which means “to decide.” We paradoxically decide or choose our crises by choosing no to choose, by hiding from ourselves as choosing agents. We lead ourselves into believing what we do not believe, into bad faith. Social crises are just this: institutional forms of bad faith. They are instances in which the social world is saturated with a closure on its own agency. How is this possible? On one account, it is that the social world itself is a generative concept, by which is meant that it is part of a complex web of knowledge claims or meanings on which certain forms of subjectivity are produced. The historical imposition of such an order of things makes it nearly impossible to live outside of such an organization of reality, while, ironically, enacting and maintaining it. From this point of view, which we shall call the archaeological, poststructural one, the phenomenological account is wanting because its foundation, namely, consciousness, is also an effect of such an order which could very well change as new, future constellation of things emerge. Yet this claim faces its own contradiction at the level of lived reality: Its completeness is presupposed when, as posited as an object of investigation, its limits are transcended. It  is, in other words, a particular advanced as a universal while presuming its own changeability. The error, then, in dismissing consciousness at simply the conceptual level is that the question of positing a concept is presupposed in the very grammar and semantics of its rejection. The phenomenological insight, in this sense of suspending ontological commitments, is that the concept emerges as an object of investigation without having a presumed method for its positing. In  other words, the very posing of investigation presupposes the validity of consciousness’ form. And since even that form transcends its own domestication or subordination, it cannot function as a subcategory of an order of things. In other words, the archaeological, poststructural critique only pertains to a particular form of consciousness, namely, one that is already yoked to a particular order of things. What, however, about a genealogical critique? What are the power interests in the assertion of a phenomenological approach? The response is that it is no more so than a genealogical one. Genealogical accounts regard disciplines and methodological approaches as “tools,” as Foucault (2003: 6) avows, as useful, but not absolute resources in processes of reflection. Since a postcolonial phenomenology begins with an act of ontological suspension, then each stage of reflection, including its own metacritical assessments, cannot be asserted as ontological without contradiction. The continued impact of identifying contradictions at moments of ontological assertion suggests that there are limits to what can be permitted even in acts

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of ontological suspension. Take, for instance, the problem of evidence. A criticism that could be made of these reflections is how self-centered they are, as if an individual consciousness could simply suspend and construct thought itself. That would be a fair criticism so long as the process was psychological. This is the point about a particular form of consciousness itself. But the kind of consciousness is not here classified nor presumed within the framework of natural phenomena; it is not, in other words, consciousness subordinated by the relativism of naturalistic frameworks or, to make it plain, modern science. It cannot be presumed, then, to be an act of a single individual. Instead, it is the articulation of a process through which even the individual who is reflecting upon the process is not located as its subject, but an anonymous participant in an effort of understanding; it is not the fish in the water, but the realization by a fish that it is in water and potentially many other layers or frames of and through which it is located as somewhere. The problem of evidence emerges, however, precisely because it is a concept that requires more than one standpoint. For something to be evident, it must potentially appear to others. Thus, even when one sees something as evident, it is from the standpoint of oneself as an Other. There is, in other words, an inherent sociality to evidence. And, since an intellectual reflection makes no sense without making its claims evident, the importance of this insight for thought itself is also evident. So, the question of sociality emerges, and it does so in the form of making itself evident. The task is made difficult, however, by having to continue these reflections without an act of ontological commitment. The social world will have to be understood through being made evident. In  many ways, as I have argued in Existentia Africana (Gordon 2000: 74–80), we already have a transcendental argument at work here since sociality is a precondition of evidentiality, and we have already established the necessity of evidence in our reflections. What makes the project more complicated is that it is one thing to presuppose others, it is another thing to articulate the reality presumed by a world of others. After all, genuine others often do what they wish, and when it comes to our shared world of things and meanings, there is the complicated question of whether they are willing to admit what they see, feel, hear, smell, or taste. But we have already revealed much in this admission, for how else could others and their independent variations of senses be meaningful without the individuating addition of their being embodied? That others are embodied raises the question of how the social world emerges. For, given the metaphysics that dominate most discussions of living bodies, there is the Cartesian problem of how one consciousness could reach another beyond the mere appearance of her or his body. There is something wrong with the Cartesian model could be our response, but that would involve explaining in exactly which way is it misguided. The first is the notion of “mind and body.” In  her introduction and first chapter of The  Invention of Women, Oyèrónké Oyeˇwùmí (1997) offers an Africana postcolonial, poststructural

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critique of this problem by challenging knowledge claims and the subsequent biological science that centers the physical body over social relations in the first place. The Africana postcolonial dimension of this critique is that Cartesianism offered an epistemological model of the self that demanded the colonization of body by mind through having to create a problem of the body. The history of colonialism as one in which colonizing groups constructed themselves as minds that control the colonized and the enslaved, beings whose sole mode of being is the body itself, brings the colonial dimension of this dichotomy to the fore. Yet this critique, powerful though it may be, does not account for the reality of how we live as extended beings in the world. In other words, it really is a criticism of an over-emphasis on the body or on the mind, especially as separate, but not on how we live them as creatures that move through the world. Even social activities such as trading or enjoying the company of others require an interplay of what it means to be “here” versus “there,” and of communicating welcome or rejection through shaking hands, hugging, or simply standing back, all activities expressed not “through” the body, but, literally, in that sense as singular—that is, embodied. Further, drawing upon similar premises that render colonizers mind and the colonized body, Fanon noted in the 1950s in his discussion of negrophobia, phobogenesis, and the black athlete in Black Skin, White Masks (1952, 1967) in his chapter, “The Negro and Psychopathology,” that such reductionism leads, ultimately, to a fear of the biological, in which the black male, for example, is eclipsed by his penis in the eyes of the negrophobe. This argument suggests that rejecting engagement with the biological may not be the right direction for a postcolonial critique to take. To capture this dimension of social embodiment, which we might wish to call its “lived” reality, while addressing the limits of Cartesianism would require some additional considerations. Cartesianism advances the human being as a meeting of two substances, but in truth, many of the problems we face emerge from the first substance, so we needn’t even go to the second one. How, in other words, does mind reach mind? But now we see the difficulty where body is denied; mind cannot “reach” mind, in other words, where neither mind exists anywhere. To be somewhere means to occupy a space in a particular time, which means to be embodied.8 A similar argument could be made about brain-body distinctions; but the difference here is that the borders are successions of physical bodies. Consider, however, the following thought experiment. What would be required for a consciousness or a mind to be embodied? It will have to be extended in the world, which means that it will have to be able to stand on or be oriented by something. As well, it could not be active without being able to extend beyond its initial grounding, which means it would require limbs, and as it reaches out to its environment in ways that involve detecting electromagnetic radiation to discerning the chemicals and gases with which it has contact, we will see the unfolding of a body that has a front and a back and

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sides as well as an up and a down. In short, “the body” is another way of saying “an extended brain” or “a living, conscious thing.” And though the Cartesian might point out that limbs can be cut off without the self being destroyed, a surgeon could point out that bits of brain can be taken away without the same effect. The contingency of parts of an organism does not mean that those parts are not extended expressions of that organism. Mind, in other words, is from toe to fingertip to forehead. What all this amounts to is that consciousness/ mind appears in the world, is evident to other minds, and is read and interacted with precisely because it is evident, it appears. The social world is, then, a complex one of intersubjectivity, but that does not  mean a mysterious spiritual world behind physical reality. It  is in and through that reality and is evident in the multitude of signifiers that constitute the expression of reality from the social world, which is what Fanon, in his introduction to Black Skin, White Masks (1967), means by sociogeny.9 That is why it would be correct to say that we learn to read our world and inscribe and constitute our relationship to it. And more, we can also see that this relationship is one in which we play the active role of making meanings while encountering a world of meanings already available to us. It is in this sense that the social world and its plethora of meanings are an achievement. Among these meanings is the subject that is the focus of decolonizing struggles to begin with, namely, the human being.10 The  act of ontological suspension and the necessity of embodied consciousness raise the question of philosophical anthropology. Unlike empirical anthropology, which focuses on empirical phenomena and the application of methods designed for such study, philosophical anthropology explores the concepts by and through which any understanding of the human being is both possible and makes sense.11 It also involves the implications of these ideas as ideas, as they are, that is, when freed as much as possible from the grip of colonizing epistemic forces. In  one sense, the postcolonial phenomenological move requires understanding the human being as a subject over whom laws find their limits. In effect, the human question, from this point of view, becomes one of studying a being that lacks a nature and yet is a consequence of natural phenomena—although these reasons have already been outlined in phenomenological terms, which are that another human being relates to one as part of a world that transcends the self. What this means is that the other’s contingency entails the other’s freedom, and given that freedom, the philosophical anthropology that follows is one of an open instead of a closed subject. In another sense, the openness of human subjectivity is already presupposed in the project of liberation and social change. A human being must, in other words, be able to live otherwise for his or her liberation to make sense. And at the level of groups, the sociogenic argument here returns: What is created by human beings can be changed by human beings. The human being is, in other words, the introduction of the artificial into the world. Thus, to impose

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the maxim of nature on the human being is to set the human element on a path toward its own destruction. And third, the argument recognizes the relationship between knowledge and being, that new forms of life are also a consequence of the production of knowledge. This outcome, too, is another natural development of an unnatural reality. The  openness of philosophical anthropology also emerges from the contingency of human subjectivity. Human beings bring new concepts into the world and, in doing so, face the anxiety of unpredictability. In  the human world, things do not often work out, and part of the intellectual struggle has been about facing that dimension of living in a human world, a world of others. Theoretical models that appeal to human necessity often face the danger of requiring a neatness of human behavior and human institutions that collapse them into clear-cut notions as, for example, the distinction between black and white. Yet, as most human adults know, the world is not simple, and the consequences of life are not always fair. They face, then, the problem of living in a world that is without neat, theodicean dictates in which evil and injustice stand outside. Such phenomena are aspects of life through which we must live, and they do not always emerge in grandiose forms but, instead, at the level of everyday life. What such reflection brings to discourses on social change is the rather awkward question: Will such efforts create a world in which human beings could actually live? To live requires, from the complex set of interrelations that constitute the social world, mundane life, and the challenge posed by decolonization of such a life is a function of what is involved in each group of people achieving what could be called “the ordinary.”12 The  options available for an everyday existence are not  the same across groups in a colonial world. In such a world, an absence of spectacular efforts facilitates the everyday life of the dominating group. We could call this simply ordinary existence. For the dominated group, the achievement of the ordinary requires extraordinary efforts. Here, we see another one of those subverted categories through the lens of Du Boisian double consciousness, for the averageness of everyday life for the dominant group conceals the institutions that support such ordinariness. This reality reveals, for instance, a major problem in recent appeals to “cosmopolitanism” in Africana liberal thought as found in the work of Appiah (2005) or the feminist, cosmopolitan position of Nussbaum (1996).13 While it is laudable that they defend the inter-connectedness of the human species and, in Appiah’s case, stand critical of “strong universalism,” they pose a value system premised upon an individual who, as in the elites of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1995), can afford it.14 One can believe that one is a citizen of the world when most global institutions are already designed for one’s benefit (as opposed to others). The folly of this position comes to the fore when one imagines how ridiculous it would be to deride a poor person for failing to be cosmopolitan. It is as ridiculous as applauding a rich person or a person of fair means for globetrotting. What is cosmopolitanism, then, in its

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concrete practice, but the assertion of the values of the affluent as the standards for everyone—including the poor? After all, cosmopolitanism is advanced by cosmopolitanists as their claim to a universal logic, or at least a near-universal one. How could such a value-system be consistent without simply erasing those who contradict it or simply rendering them irrelevant?15 Such forms of political theorizing treat individuals and their values as though they do not stand on social infrastructures. Where institutions are against a particular group, that group faces a constant problem of insufficiency. How can a group ever be good enough when its members’ actions cannot qualify their membership by virtue of never serving as the standard of membership? A radical philosophical anthropology would point out the contradiction of a system governed by such a logic of membership since such a system would require presenting some groups of people as epistemologically closed, while making other groups of people the standard by which humanity is forged, which, ironically, would also be a form of epistemic closure, but it would be so at the level of an ideal. In effect, it would eliminate some human beings from the human community through the creation of a non-human standard of being human. The question of lived-reality would then disintegrate since each set of human beings would “be” a surface existent instead of the complex dynamic of an expressed inner life in the world. Lacking such a dimension, the human world would simply become an ossification of values, and the avowed goal of setting humanity free would collapse into its opposite. Why such a focus on the human in a postcolonial phenomenology? On one hand, the answer is historical. Colonialism, slavery, and racism have degraded humankind. The reassertion of humankind requires the assertion of the humanity of the degraded. But such an assertion is, as we have been seeing, not as simple as it appears, for there was not, and continues not to be, a coherent notion of the human subject on which emancipation can be supported. It is much easier to assert a humanity that supports oppression than it is to construct one that carries, paradoxically, the burden of freedom. On the other hand, the answer is “purely” theoretical. A  radically critical examination of epistemic colonizing practices must be metacritical, which means, as we have seen through Fanon, being radically self-reflective. It would be bad faith to deny that this means questioning our own humanity.

A Geopolitical Conclusion Our explorations thus far have moved back and forth through two conceptions of theory that have not been made explicit. The word theory has its origins in theological notions. From the ancient Greek word theoria, which means “view,” or, in the infinitive, “to view” or “to see,” a further etymological break down reveals the word theo, from which was theus or Zdeus (Zeus) or, in contemporary terms, “God.” To do theoretical work meant, then, to attempt to see what God

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sees. Since God has the power of omniscience, it meant to see all, and what would such an achievement be other than truth itself? Yet implicit in such an effort is the reality that human beings could only make such an attempt as an attempt, because human beings are not gods, and although the gods do sometimes smile on an individual human being and thereby stimulate a glimpse of clarity, for the most part, most of us are kept in the proverbial dark, or at least twilight. In a godless world, the theory is in some ways like the continued grammar that supports a rationalization without the God that animated it. The “theorist“ thus becomes an embarrassing figure, a searcher seeking an outcome that would be ashamed of its origins. What, in other words, does it mean to do theory in a godless universe? One response would be to give up theory and focus simply on criticism, on showing where the continued effort to do theory leads to embarrassing and fruitless outcomes. Another response would be to approach ideas as objects in a dark room. Theoretical work then becomes at first the lighting of a match with which to light a candle with which to find one’s way to a light switch. At each stage, the contents of the room, including its walls, become clearer and offer a more coherent context in which to make decisions about how to live in the room. The  process of increasing clarity continues well after the light switch in the form of thought itself, often captured by the term “illumination.” And then there is another model, where thought itself creates new relationships and things much like the Big Bang view of an expanding universe; as there is an expansion of matter, there is, as well, an expansion of thought. How these views of thought unfold in postcolonial thought can be seen through a very influential recent metaphor. In the 1980s, Audre Lorde, in her collection Sister Outsider (1984), argued that the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. The result of this insight has, however, been both positive and negative. On the one hand, it has been a rallying cry against Eurocentrism and colonizing concepts, against the dialectics of recognition in which dominating ideals reign. But on the other hand, it has also served the interest of the “criticisms only” groups, those who regard theory as ultimately imperial and, historically, Western. This  response emerges from the negative aspect of the metaphor, namely, tearing down the master’s house. It is odd that a metaphor that builds upon the struggles of slaves did not consider other aspects of the lived reality of slaves. Why, for instance, would people who are linked to production regard themselves in solely destructive terms? Yes, they want to end slavery. But they also want to build freedom. To do that, what they may wish to do with the master’s tools is to use them, along with the tools they had brought with them and which facilitated their survival, to build their own homes. How could the master’s house function as such in a world of so many houses not premised upon mastery? Would not that render such a house, in the end, irrelevant and in effect drain its foundations of mastery?

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Such a shift would be one both of space and place. Postcolonial thought cannot afford to be locked in the role of negative critique. An inauguration of a shift in the geography of reason needs to be effected wherein the productive dimensions of thought can flourish. In other words, thought needs a place in which to live. Ideas dwell across the ages in the concepts and institutions human beings have built, and the more livable those institutions are for human beings, the healthier, no doubt, this symbiotic relationship will be as it takes on the legacy of that resounding echo from which symbolic life was born so long ago.

Notes 1 For  discussion of these themes of recognition and their limitations, see Gordon (2006a, especially the final chapter) and Gordon and Gordon (2006). 2 See Abraham (2004). 3 See Bogues (2003: 25–46). 4 This is not to say that theodicean problems are not raised in African and Africana thought. See Gyekye (1995: 123–128). 5 This is one of the themes of Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1967), where the black petit-bourgeoisie seek recognition in a world in which they are not, and in its very systems of values could not be, the standard. They, in effect, affirm their inferiority. 6 On this theme, particularly on how it unfolded in debates over the Black Republic of Haiti, see Fischer (2004). 7 On this theme, see Fanon’s classic The Wretched of the Earth (1963) and Todorov’s The Conquest of America (1984). See also Mamdani’s Citizen and Subject (1996) for a more recent discussion of politics and rule in a colonial context. 8 For a longer discussion of this argument, see my chapter “The Body in Bad Faith” (Gordon 1995b). 9 For discussion, see Wynter (2001) and Gordon (2005, 2006b). 10 Africana philosophy, and by implication Africana postcolonial thought, brings this question of the human being to the fore for the obvious reason, at least in its modern instantiation, of its being theory advanced through the world of subjects whose humanity has been denigrated or denied. See Gordon (2000). 11 There are many roads to philosophical anthropology in the modern age and in postcolonial thought. The situating of the question is infamously raised in Immanuel Kant’s practical philosophy, although it has been a leitmotif of modern thought as early as Hobbes’s atomistic natural philosophy, which attempts a theory of human nature as the basis of his argument for legitimate political order. The  Haitian humanist Anténor Firmin has shown (1999), however, that Kant’s, and also Hegel’s claims, to philosophical anthropology were not properly anthropological at all but, in fact, geographical. The legacy of that political construction continues in contemporary constructions of intelligent, civilized people of the Nordic regions versus supposedly doltish, savage ones from tropical zones. In  more recent times, the question took a marked turn in Sartrean existential Marxism, as found in Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason (2004), which placed him in conflict with structuralist anthropology, and one could see how the question of the human being as a limit to imposed structures took its return in Foucault’s archaeology and genealogy, where the production of the human being as a subject of inquiry came about in the face of the subject’s role as both producer and product. 12 For  elaboration of the value of the ordinary, see Natanson (1986) and Gordon (1995a).

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13 Appiah’s argument would require his work not being identified as “Africana” liberal thought. That he advances anecdotes on Ghana and has built his ideas out of his work on race theory in Africana philosophy, however, brings out the question of what it means for an Africana philosopher to write as though the African world plays any serious role in forging the conditions of global access available to its members. That the degree to which that African can be materially dissociated from blackness plays a significant role, as compared to the access available to a European who strongly identifies with whiteness, renders the notion of Africana cosmopolitanism in the terrain of self-deception. One may pose the same point to Nussbaum on the distinction between the women who are part of the communities of women who share governance of the world versus, basically, the rest. 14 F. Scott Fitzgerald was, however, a lot less naive on these matters as evidenced by his portrayal of the callous attitude of these ruling cosmopolitans, whose globetrotting depends on constantly meeting each other everywhere. 15 This is not to say that globalism and cosmopolitanism are identical. Buying access to the world is global in consequence, but since only few people can afford that, it becomes a clear case of confusing their global access with universal access. Such individuals could only become universal if, and only if, they are the only individuals under consideration. In effect, although unintentionally so, we find ourselves here on theodicean terrain. Those who cannot afford global access are simply rendered outside of the system of cosmopolitan values or simply presumed to be so, if they could afford it, which means that the whole point is not really about the values at all, but the access. In effect, Fanon’s critique of modern colonial values returns, where the political economy of social transformation trumps the ethics that were presumed independent of social infrastructures.

References Abraham, William E. (2004), “Anton Wilhelm Amo”, in Kwasi Wiredu (ed.), A Companion to African Philosophy. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 191–199. Appiah, Kwame Anthony (2005), Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. New York: W.W. Norton. Bogues, B. Anthony (2003), Black Heretics, Black Prophets: Radical Political Intellectuals. New York: Routledge. Du Bois,W.E.B. (1898),“The Study of the Negro Problems”, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, XI: 1–23. doi:10.1177/000271629801100101. Du Bois, W.E.B. (1920), Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe. Du Bois, W.E.B. (1982 [1903]), The Souls of Black Folk. New York: New American Library. Fanon, Frantz (1952), Peau noire, masques blancs. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. Fanon, Frantz (1963), The Wretched of the Earth.Trans. Constance Farrington with an introduction by Jean-Paul Sartre. New York: Grove Press. Fanon, Frantz (1967), Black Skin,White Masks. Trans. Charles Lamm Markman. New York: Grove Press. Firmin, Anténor (1999  [1885]), Equality of Human Races: A  Nineteenth Century Haitian Scholar’s Response to European Racialism. New York: Taylor & Francis Group. Fischer, Sibylle (2004), Modernity Disavowed. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Fitzgerald, F. Scott (1995), The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribners. Foucault, Michel (1973), The Order of Things:An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Vintage.

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Foucault, Michel (2003), “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France (1975– 1976 ). Trans. David Macey. New York: St. Picador. Gordon, Lewis R. (1995a), Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay on Philosophy and the Human Sciences. New York: Routledge. Gordon, Lewis R. (1995b), Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books. Gordon, Lewis R. (2000), Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential Thought. New York: Routledge. Gordon, Lewis R. (2005), “Through the Zone of Nonbeing: A  Reading of Black Skin, White Masks in Celebration of Fanon’s Eightieth Birthday”, The C.L.R. James Journal, 11(1), 1–43. Gordon, Lewis R. (2006a), Disciplinary Decadence: Living Thought in Trying Times. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Gordon, Lewis R. (2006b), “Is the Human a Teleological Suspension of Man? A  Phenomenological Exploration of Sylvia Wynter’s Fanonian and Biodicean Reflections,” in Anthony Bogues (ed.), After Man, Towards the Human: Critical Essays on the Thought of Sylvia Wynter. Kingston, JA: Ian Randle, 237–257. Gordon, Lewis R. (2008), An Introduction to Africana Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gordon, Lewis R., and Gordon, Jane Anna (eds.) (2006), A Companion to African-American Studies. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Gyekye, Kwame (1995), An Essay on African Philosophical Thought. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Henry, Paget (2005), “Africana Phenomenology: A Philosophical Look”, The C.L.R. James Journal, 11(1), 79–112. Husserl, Edmund (1965), Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy. Trans. and ed. by Quentin Lauer. New York: Harper & Row. Lorde, Audre (1984), Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. New York: Crossing Press. Mamdani, Mahmood (1996), Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Matthews, Donald H. (2005), Du Bois, the Black Dilthey:W.E.B. Du Bois,Wilhelm Dilthey and the Study of African American Culture. Presentation at the American Academy of Religion, Philadelphia, PA. Mudimbe, Valentin Y. (1988), The Invention of Africa. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Natanson, Maurice (1986), Anonymity: A  Study in the Philosophy of Alfred Schutz. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Nussbaum, Martha C. (1996), For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism, edited by Joshua Cohen. Boston: Beacon Press. Ortega y Gasset, José (1932), The Revolt of the Masses. New York:W.W. Norton & Company. Oyeˇwùmí, Oyèrónké (1997), The  Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Sartre, Jean-Paul (2004), Critique of Dialectical Reason, vol. 1. Trans. Alan Sheridan-Smith. London:Verso. Todorov, Tzevan (1984), The  Conquest of America: The  Question of the Other. New  York: Harper & Row. Wynter, Sylvia (2001), “Towards the Sociogenic Principle: Fanon, Identity, the Puzzle of Conscious Experience and What It Is Like to Be ‘Black’”, in Mercedes Durán-Cogan and Antonio Gómez-Moriana (eds.), National Identities and Sociopolitical Changes in Latin America. New York: Routledge, 31–66.

6 CHACHA-WARMI Another Form of Gender Equality, from the Perspective of Aymara Culture* Yanett Medrano Valdez

Introduction In a neoliberal world and society increasingly dominated by competitiveness and individualism and fragmented by the social division of labor, which establishes countless hierarchically organized functions while also creating social inequality, we are confronted with gender imbalances expressed in the various spheres in which men and women operate. The Western imaginary sees “indigenous peoples”1 as focal points for inequality, discrimination, subordination, exploitation, and violence against women, and as prime examples of communities which fuel and preserve the patriarchal system in their midst. This notion is still upheld in situations in which women take on the role of caring for animals, spinning, weaving, and providing the labor force for sowing and harvesting through ayni and minka, while men, in turn, plough the land, go to fairs to trade cattle, work as laborers on building sites in the urban centers, and go down to the valleys to barter goods. According to Arteaga Montero (1990), patriarchal features are evident in the roles enacted by Andean men and women due to the fact that men have the monopoly of power and exert this over women and, even though equality exists, not only between the sexes, but also in all forms of social interaction, he claims this has probably been used to mask genuinely unequal relations as much as to justify and give meaning to those based on equality (Grillo Fernández 1996: 70). This way of interpreting another cultural reality from a Western perspective and labeling it Andean patriarchy has prompted me to focus on certain * First published in the journal Pluralidades – Revista para el debate intercultural, 1(1), 11–39, in 2012. Available at http://casadelcorregidor.pe/pluralidades/pluralidades.php.

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questions regarding the conceptual category of gender, at a time when efforts are being made to describe, explain, and interpret relations between men and women in Aymara culture in Western terms, highlighting this cultural element as the product of machismo, violence, and inequality. At the same time, I aim to recover and interpret the original meaning of chacha-warmi, this other way of envisaging relations between men and women according to Aymara culture which is the product of a historical-social legacy that has existed for over 500 years in the Andean world, but has been altered and cut off from its essential meaning of living in complementary duality. I believe that the necessary efforts have not been made to understand and interpret the experience of the Andean world on the basis of its own concepts, rather than those from outside, and the different form of being and existence between men and women which it presents. This  raises certain questions: What convergences and divergences can be identified in the conceptual categories of gender and culture? How do gender relations operate in Aymara culture? How does the system of dualisms in Andean culture operate in relation to gender equality in Western culture? Is it necessary to reclaim and reformulate the search for balance between men and women based on chacha-warmi in Aymara culture? This chapter does not aim to provide full, detailed, and systematic answers to each of these questions, but merely intends to offer a basic general approach to analyzing this “other way of gender equality, based on Aymara culture.”

Gender and Andean Culture The  term “gender” is assumed, in most cases, to refer solely to women and to consider all women equal, even though certain interests and needs are not always common to all women. My approach to culture and gender is based on this premise, in an attempt to understand the characteristics attributed to men and women in a particular place and time. Each culture defines, in historical and social terms, the characteristics, identities, values, and roles that are ascribed to men and to women and enacted within social, economic, and political contexts. In this respect, Stolcke (2000) has proposed that the analytical concept of “gender” transcends biological reductionism by interpreting relations between women and men as gendered cultural constructs, attributing social, cultural, and psychological meanings to biological sexual identities (Stolcke 2000: 29), thus raising the following question: Does gender, as a social construct in all cultures and circumstances, have anything to do with the natural fact of differences based on sex? (Stolcke 2000: 31). Within a framework of cultural diversity, gender is a set of “male” and “female” social and cultural characteristics or, in other words, an acquired identity. On the basis of contributions produced by anthropology, gender is defined as a cultural and historical interpretation of each society, created around sexual

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difference, and giving rise to social representations, practices, discourses, norms, values, and relations, i.e., a sex/gender system (Murguialday 2002). Hence, anthropology enables us to understand that this social construct is confined to a specific culture, within a concrete space and time. From this, it may be inferred that gender relations are constructed in completely different ways from one culture to another, and, hence, Western culture perceives the creation of deep inequality and the consequent restriction of rights. This is due to two key features and points of departure: It is extremely anthropocentric and hegemonic,2 in complete opposition to the culture of the Andes, where behavior and characteristics must be interpreted on the basis of its own rationale, meaning that any assessment of the Andean world in terms that are alien to it quite simply bear no relation to it (Arteaga Montero 1990: 8). Thus, any attempt to universalize categories and/or theoretical constructs would disrupt the logic of many social, political, economic, cultural, and religious institutions, above all those which are non-Western. One aspect which should be emphasized here is the fact that the concept of gender, when assumed to be universal, has “denaturalized” the practices, expectations, and values constructed around women, breaking the associations which link man with culture and woman with nature, 3 which originated in modernity itself and have created inequality and a historical tendency to ideologically “naturalize” the prevailing socioeconomic inequalities. This naturalization of a social condition plays a key role in reproducing class society and explains the special significance attached to differences between the sexes (Stolcke 2000: 29). Thus, it can be seen that the concept of gender is, in most cases, a socially and historically constructed form of inequality between men and women and that essentially it is neither biological nor natural, although when it is combined with other concepts such as ethnic group, race, or cultural identity, the latter almost always tends to be naturalized.4 Verena Stolcke refers to this as “biological culturalism,” a naturalization of cultural traits or a blending of biological criteria, in which the confusion between the natural and biological used as criteria for social differentiation is the result of two preconceptions: on the one hand, the existence of two environments, one natural and the other cultural, which have always been understood to affect human experience in different ways; on the other hand, race, which exists as a specific criteria for differentiating between human beings, regardless of anything else (Stolcke 2000: 39). Stolcke adds that race, like certain ethnic characteristics, is a symbolic construct used in certain socio political circumstances as a criterion to define and demarcate human groups. Races do not  exist as natural phenomena, while ethnicity, despite good intentions, tends to be conceived of as a not  entirely cultural characteristic of a group (Stolcke 2000: 41). In other words, racism is established within the ideological process by which an unequal social order is presented as natural.

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The Andean World5 In order to understand how gender is viewed in Andean culture, it is necessary to begin with some observations about the latter. Firstly, the basis of the Andean vision of life is the pachamama,6 the source of life (allpamantam kawsay qatarin: life is born or springs up from the earth). In spatial terms, there are three subworlds: kaypacha (this world, the world in which we live), hanaq pacha (the sidereal world, or world of the planets), and ukupacha (the underworld or bowels of the earth). The element which links these three worlds is water, the symbol of the fertility of the earth-mother, which emerges from the earth and rises to the heavens. Time is the succession of human experience: there is no specific reference to the future since it is simply the source and final destination of the human race. Hence, this is a totally different vision to the one understood in Western culture in which time is predetermined, designed, and established; the past does not count and the future is being permanently constructed. The  life which people should strive to lead involves living well, in harmony with nature, the community, and the deities (Alcántara Hernández 2010). Hence, we are faced with a “living and revitalizing world’’ (Grillo Fernández 1996: 54), a phrase which best explains any reference to Andean culture. As  Grillo Fernández notes, “there are as many worlds as there are cultures’’ (1996: 4),7 and this is a vital and revitalizing world in which everything is alive and engenders life—not only humans, animals, and plants, but also stones, mountains, rivers, streams, the sun, the moon, and the stars—everyone is related, and we all belong to the community we create and which creates us: life is only possible within the symbiosis of the community (Grillo Fernández 1996: 70–72). Hence, total harmony and interrelations are established between the three main dimensions or components of the cosmos or pacha: human society (runakuna), wild nature (sallqa), and the community of gods (wak’akuna) (Grillo Fernández 1996: 72). These three components shape the Andean world and are closely related, due to the dialogue and reciprocity established between them. Continuous processes of interpenetration, exchanging of elements, filtering, and absorption are created, refining the performance of each, since they are not rigid, but elastic and not superficial, but internal (Grillo Fernández 1993: 26). It is a highly sensitive, unpredictable, and even erratic world, in which the unexpected is treated with familiarity and even levity. It is also a holistic world that involves belonging to a community which has no parameters for exclusion of any kind. Moreover, it is an immanent world in which everything takes place openly and visibly within the pacha, and there is no supernatural and no sense of beyond or transcendence. In the Andean way of thinking (see Figure 6.1), in which relations are based on continuous dialogue and harmony between all the living beings which shape

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Anthropocentric meaning CELESTIAL WORLD (heaven and Paradise)

Holisc meaning THE LIVING, REVITALISING, DIVERS, HETEROGENOUS, CREATIVE, COMMUNITARIAN ANDEAN WORLD

HANAQ PACHA (the sidereal world)

THE HUMAN COMMUNITY

KAY PACHA

TERRESTRIAL WORLD (faith and fear)

THE NATURAL COMMUNITY

PACHA

THE COMMUNITY OF THE GODS

(the world in which we live)

INFERNAL WORLD

UKU PACHA

(evil, sin, and suffering)

(the bowels of the world)

The Andean world. (Based on a text by Eduardo Grillo Fernández and Arrufo Alcántara.)

FIGURE 6.1

it, there is no place for exclusion or discrimination and no notion of separating words from deeds, ideas from matter, subject from object, the real from the imaginary, order from chaos, or the essential from the accidental (Grillo Fernández 1993: 24). Instead, we are confronted with a holistic world and a sense of unity, in which the existence of one living being is as essential as that of any other. Maintaining this reciprocality becomes essential, since if these dialogues and conversations are fractured, relations become “asymmetrical”—one living being would benefit whist another would be disadvantaged—and “hierarchical”—with some individuals giving orders and others carrying them out.

The Construction of Gender from the Perspective of Aymara Culture Various different cultures thrive in the Andes, each with its own way of experiencing the living Andean world, including the Aymara culture which, like others, has developed a four-dimensional way of thinking ( Juárez Mamani 2007) based on four coherently balanced principles: relationality, correspondence, reciprocity, and complementarity. It is these principles that enable us to understand this other, different way of establishing relations between men and women.

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The Four-Dimensional Rationale The  “relationality principle” is the core of Andean thinking, as opposed to any form of isolation, individualization, or absolutization of the individual (see Figure 6.2). Estermann (1997: 9) notes that, on the basis of this notion, a system of multiple relations is the condition which makes life, ethics, and knowledge possible: without relations there is no individual, nothing exists, and therefore all knowledge and all acts are relational. Everything is linked in order to achieve harmonious, balanced development and nothing is found in isolation, apart, separate, or individualized: a dual, reciprocal relationship is always established (see Figure 6.3). This dual relationality can be seen in different spheres,8 including thinking (lup’iña), shared feelings, values (chuymaniñasa), language (aru), spirituality (purapa), the personal and the social ( jaqi), the historical and social (wiqakuti), political organization (mayku kunturi), work (luraña), and medicine and disease (qulla). Relationality in feelings is organized around two kinds of sensation: the real and objective (kunanaka) is positioned first and its subjective representation (illa) comes second (see Figure 6.4). In language, the third person is the neutralizing element in an axis around which two people revolve. In this case, jiwasa is the element which neutralizes two antagonistic opposites (Figure 6.5).

WARMI

CORRESPONDENCE

COMPLEMENTARITY

CHACHA

RELATIONALITY

RECIPROCITY

FIGURE  6.2 The  four-dimensional rationale. (Adapted from the cover of Pérez Quispe, Julio et al., Pacha Jaqichasiña Masachakuy, Verbo Divino, Bolivia, 2008.)

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Particular idea

Shared idea

Iyawsa

Inawsa

CH´AMAKAN (Philosopher, sage, or educated person)

Relationality in ideas. (Based on a text by Juárez Mamani, Juan, “Pacha”, blog Realidad Aymara, de 7 de julho, http://juanjuma.blogspot.com/2007/07/pachafilosofa-aymara.html, 2007.)

FIGURE 6.3

Subjective feeling qhaxya—the home of my spirit

Concrete feeling qixu—thunder

FIGURE  6.4 Relationality in feelings. (Based on a text by Juárez Mamani, Juan, “Pacha”, blog Realidad Aymara, de 7 de julho, http://juanjuma.blogspot. com/2007/07/pacha-filosofa-aymara.html, 2007.)

First person naya

Second person juma

JIWASA (Third person as neutralizing element)

Relationality in language. (Based on a text by Juárez Mamani, Juan, “Pacha”, blog Realidad Aymara, de 7 de julho, http://juanjuma.blogspot. com/2007/07/pacha-filosofa-aymara.html, 2007.)

FIGURE  6.5

Relationships between the gods in the spiritual domain of the Aymaras are also dual: willka (sun)—phaxsi (moon) (Figures 6.6 and 6.7). Labor is also associated with the couple, since each plot that is cultivated involves the work of both the man and the woman. The preparation of food implies dual action: the woman as the focus for sustenance and the man as the labor force, both complementing each other (Figure 6.8).

Chacha-warmi

The human

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The divine

jaqí

pachamama

YATIRI (A mediator or bridge) FIGURE  6.6 Relationality in spirituality. (Based on a text by Juárez Mamani, Juan, “Pacha”, blog Realidad Aymara, de 7 de julho, http://juanjuma.blogspot. com/2007/07/pacha-filosofa-aymara.html, 2007.)

NAPACHA JAQUIPACHA PANICHATA

The complete “I” (body and mind) The human being (body and mind) Man and woman in a mutual relationship

Human relationality also involves coexistence. (Based on a text by Juárez Mamani, Juan, “Pacha”, blog Realidad Aymara, de 7 de julho, http:// juanjuma.blogspot.com/2007/07/pacha-filosofa-aymara.html, 2007.)

FIGURE  6.7

chacha Man, husband

warmi Woman, wife,

Relationality in work. (Based on a text by Juárez Mamani, Juan, “Pacha”, blog Realidad Aymara, de 7 de julho, http://juanjuma.blogspot. com/2007/07/pacha-filosofa-aymara.html, 2007.)

FIGURE  6.8

It is, therefore, a system of relationality that is always directed toward neutralizing opposites in order to achieve harmonious, balanced development ( Juárez Mamani 2007). With regard to the “correspondence principle,” Juárez Mamani (2007) highlights two elements: on the one hand, “harmony” is the relationship between all the elements in the universe designed to create an organic whole, with “unity,” in turn, including symmetrical, balanced relations; on the other hand, “symmetry,” is understood as the relationship and proportionality between

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corresponding elements that involves being “equal amongst equals” (for example, life and death, human and non-human, symmetry and balance, and man and woman). The  “complementarity principle” establishes that each part, element, and action has an opposite-complement, i.e., an opposite that does not exclude, but is inclusive and complementary, thus creating an integrated whole. Hence, an entity only becomes complete and fulfilled by relating to others; the absolute is deficient, incomplete, and needs a complement since it is this complementary nexus that saves the entity from total isolation, energizes it, and fills it with life (Estermann 1997: 13). This  complementarity (see Figure  6.9) is expressed in the thinking and experiences of the Andean man-woman in different ways, in life itself or in cosmic, ethical, aesthetic, social, and spiritual domains. In the “reciprocity principle,” each relationship between elements or actions corresponds to another interaction—it constitutes a two-way reciprocal relation that operates in different spheres: economic, family, social, natural, ethical, and spiritual. The  pachamama ritual, for example, which is held to give thanks for the produce received, is a prime example of an act which represents this reciprocality as an essential condition and guarantee of fertility and the preservation of life; in ayni (a system of mutual aid), it is customary to say: “if I help you with the harvest today, you will help me another day”; children are raised and educated to understand that they will later repay their parents by helping them and taking care of them in their old age. Therefore, “each action only fulfils its meaning and purpose through a complementary action which re-establishes the balance (that has been disturbed) between social agents’’ (Estermann 1997: 14), as well as in the natural and spiritual communities. Consequently, these principles show that in social, economic, political, and spiritual relations developed in the Andes through relationality, correspondence, reciprocity, and complementarity, “everything is both man and

sun and moon sky and earth man and woman day and night light and dark FIGURE 6.9

Opposites which are inseparably linked.

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woman (ukuy ima/qhariwarmi).” Hence, men and women are complementary opposites and the hierarchical status between them is functional rather than excluding or, in other words, “opposites are inclusive, not  exclusive.” This is the foundation for this other way of understanding gender equality, in Western terms, from the perspective of Aymara culture. In the Western (anthropocentric) rationale, the categories of man and women are complementary, but mutually exclusive, thus generating inner asymmetrical and hierarchical relations or “different opposites,” in which the masculine constitutes the higher status, public, productive, cultural, and political, endowed with prestige and rank, generally in opposition to the feminine which is described as the lower status, private, reproductive, natural, and personal, which is discredited and subordinate.9

A System of Dualisms As we have seen, the association of masculine and feminine in Aymara culture becomes particularly significant when it is projected onto economic, political, social, cultural, and spiritual contexts, although some authors consider that these relations belong to symbolic and mythological domains and are part of Andean essentialism. In this respect, Choque Quispe (2007) refers to the term sullka (gender inequality), explaining that in Aymara culture, relations are based on inequality and exploitation, subtly masking subordination with fictitious or blood relationships, and also bases its stratification on a diffuse differentiation which, to outside eyes, appears to be uniformity (Choque Quispe 2007: 7). This view of a part of the Andean world seems to be lost in modernist interpretations, since “many” of the Western categories are unable to understand “much” of the reality of Andean culture and even the translations that have been produced are not properly understood. Understanding the said “complementary opposition,” in which everything has its essential “other half,” therefore enables us to understand that everything in the Andean world is organized in pairs which must work together, thus removing unequal and subordinate relations. Some of the dual relations that can be found in Aymara culture are presented here to illustrate this point: •

The Aymara world establishes two dual complementary aspects: urqusuyu and umasuyu. The first, symbolized by man, corresponds to the mountainous region where the climate is suitable for livestock rather than crops and is also the home of the gods (the apus or achachilas); the second, symbolized by women, is the area where the land is farmed and where the pachamama is the prime ideological expression of the reproductivity vital for the jaqi or runa (Choque Canqui 1992: 62)

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In  the system of dual leadership, kuntur–mamami not  only represents family origins, but also the origins of Aymara culture, as a dual mechanism for organizing both (Arnold 1992: 6)10 Right and left form another duality, in which the right is considered masculine and the left feminine: it is customary for men to sit higher up on the right-hand side of the house and women lower down on the left-hand side. With regard to elements of the natural world, the larger mountains are given the masculine and the smaller ones the feminine gender,11 as are the sun and the moon, respectively.12

Arnold (1992) analyses the different perceptions of house building in the Andes, specifically in Qaqachaka (Bolivia), focusing on two aspects: the house as a cosmos based on gender, and as a cultural memory. She also notes that the house is a life-generating source, a feminine symbol of plenty and a reproductive matrix. This association is due to the fact that in the Andean world women represent the continuing production, processing, and distribution of food within the household. This is acknowledged when a girl is born, especially if she is the first child, which is seen as a sign of hope and luck for the future life of the couple: it is said that “the house will have plenty of food, livestock and wealth’’ and “the animals will breed well.” If a male child is born, this is said to mean a life of poverty in which “there will be no food or livestock in the home and the animals will not produce offspring.” These ideas reflect the fact that the men work for the women and deliver the food supplies they have produced to them for distribution and consumption, activities also supervised by the women of the house. The  singing, or simillt’aña,13 dedicated to food during sowing and harvest time, is also the women’s job, with men playing only a secondary role, since it is only women’s songs that can “water the earth’’ before sowing. Therefore, when the women open their mouths to sing, the old seeds that exist inside them in liquid form—from the chicha they drink, which is made from fermented corn from the cob—give them the strength and inspiration to sow the new seeds in the land. Women’s voices are therefore the intermediaries between the human and the natural which can influence the growth and reproduction of sources of food (Arnold et al. 1992: 117–119). The development of these binary forms, which are both opposite and complementary, aims to create balance and harmony. Hence, for Andean men and women, everything takes place within a complementary dualism and everything functions in terms of this bipolarity, in which man assumes a dual attitude toward conceiving himself, otherwise he would not exist and would be nothing14 (for example, husband and wife [chacha-warmi], sun and moon [willkaph’axsi], life and death  [ jaka-jiwa], female mountain and male mountain, deities [t’allamallku], fire and wind [nina-wayra], and above and below [arajsayamanqhasaya]), as described in Figure 6.9.

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Relations Between Men and Women Based on Chacha-warmi In Aymara culture, relations between men and women are expressed through the terms jaqi or runa, which are acquired through marriage ( jaqichasiña), providing a gender identity known as chacha-warmi that has a totally different meaning to the Western sense: when the engaged couple are joined in matrimony, they become jaqi or jaqicha, jaqichaña, jaqira tukuyaña, and jaqichthapiña, i.e., making responsible people or adults in the community.

Jaqi or runa: “A Person in a Relationship“ In  the complementary, dualistic Andean world view, a young man (wayna) and young woman (tawaqu) become fully realized people ( jaqi) when they live together as a couple, establishing the dual relationship of husband and wife (chacha-warmi) in the community to which they belong (ayllu).15 The jaqi is defined as “a person who is in a relationship,” in a holistic sense, with everything, including the cosmos itself. In  a dual complementary and reciprocal relationship this involves, on the one hand, “being a person” and, on the other hand, “being in a relationship or relationships” or, in other words, a dialogical identity based on reciprocal correspondence with the cosmic order and with the pacha (Pérez Quispe et al. 2008: 44–45). Thus, in this other vision of space, time, and life in the Andean world, the “ jaqi or runa,” as the child of the earth-mother, structures their behavior on the basis of care, respect, harmony, help, and cooperation involving all elements of the cosmos, and is both a carer and a preserver of life, living wisely within the cosmos and assuming complementary and reciprocal responsibility. In  other words, all the activities of the jaqi must be directed toward living in harmony with the surrounding world and striving not to have any negative impact on the balance of the cosmos. In addition, there is another word in the Aymara language which refers to a “complete, fully realized being”—the suma jaqi (Torres Chuquimia 2010)—an expression which extends beyond the meaning of jaqi, as the fusion of four elements: llampu chuyma, understood as awareness based on great commitment; ch’aymantay ajayu,16 which is a heightened form of sacred energy, since living beings do not exist in isolation from the energy of the cosmos; pockthat amayu, representing mature intellect; and asky lurawi, understood as action for the benefit of a higher intelligence. It is an expression which represents and symbolizes the full realization of those who become jaqi.

Jaqichasiña: “Full Complementarity Between Two People“ The  word jaqichasiña17 is used in the Aymara language to mean marriage. Translated literally, it means “becoming a person mutually, as a couple.” This is

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a major social event and part of the basic system by which the community is organized. It is characterized by two elements, duality and complementarity, which establish the way of life for the newly wed couple and have an impact on their cultural and social environment, while also providing the foundations of Andean culture. It signifies the full, fertile complementarity between two people (chacha-warmi), dedicated to the conservation of the cosmos, to reciprocity, and to remaining within the pacha, and thus “transcends being and living as a couple.” The reciprocity which emerges through marriage and preserves balance is not  restricted solely to the life of the new couple, but also affects their relations with the family, the community, nature, and the deities. Any breach of this reciprocity in any of the various different relations can have severe consequences for the couple and, in particular, for the community, such as hail, frost, drought, or flooding (chhijchhi, juyphi, lapaqa, thaya). There  are also various features which endow it with a sui generis quality. Firstly, it is part of a network of family relations (the direct descendants and ancestors on both sides of the family and close relatives, godparents, and godchildren) which shape interactions based on solid, stable family links and interrelations and do not  permit the dissolution of marriage (Mamani 1999: 316); secondly, it establishes positions of authority and other services to the community; thirdly it enables Andean technology, passed on from parents to children and from grandparents to grandchildren, to be practiced, applying ancestral knowledge to agriculture, livestock, and textiles to ensure that the new couple live successfully in the community and are not disgraced or criticized; fourthly, it develops mutual aid and shared responsibility through ayni,18 arku,19 and apxata.20

The Chacha-warmi Dualism In the chacha-warmi dualism,21 from a biological point of view, chacha acquires the meaning of man, husband, adult male, and married man, while warmi signifies woman, wife, adult female, and married woman; from a sociocultural perspective, as Gavilán, cited by Mamani, notes (1999), it means matrimony, the union of two opposite human beings who enact the Aymara model as husband and wife. Citing Platt, Mamani (1999) states that chacha-warmi is a dual, mutually binding, complementary body that interacts in the interests of conjugal equilibrium. He  adds each member of the married couple is fully aware of their identity, individuality, possibilities, and roles within the marriage and the community, characterized by: (a) an individual identity within the dual body; (b) interactions governed and standardized by culture; (c) tasks and responsibilities that are shared equally; and (d) awareness of their roles inspired by panipacha (Mamani 1999: 308–309).

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The concept of panipacha is therefore “the mainstay of chacha-warmi” because it enables us to understand the significance of the union of two people in the Andean experience of the world. The  equivalent to panipacha in English is “human couple,” and in the Andean context it denotes a dual body structured in terms of similar statuses and categories, applicable not  only to a married couple, but also various social spheres that have dual connotations (Mamani 1999: 309). It  is also important to emphasize that status and category in chacha-warmi are based on the premise that both parties have equal conditions, belong to the same category, and complement each other, since neither is dependent on the other (Mamani 1999: 313). Nowadays, this assertion has been disarticulated for several reasons; hypothetically, one such factor is related to the appearance of various Western conceptual constructs (such as the autonomy or empowerment of women), which have dismantled chacha-warmi and disturbed its notion of the harmonious balance of life and the complementary dualism of being and living.

Conclusion In the majority of cases, the universalization of the theoretical categories and/ or constructs through which the West views indigenous cultures has resulted in the disintegration of many of their social, political, economic, cultural, and religious institutions. Gender relations are constructed in completely different ways in different cultures and hence in the culture of the Andes—a holistic world in which the existence of the one is so essential to the other—preserving this reciprocal relationality becomes essential: if it were to break down, it would destroy the equilibrium and harmony and create asymmetrical and hierarchical relationships. The  principles of relationality, correspondence, reciprocity, and complementarity which are the foundations of Aymara culture show that in developing social, economic, political, and spiritual relations, “everything is both man and woman at the same time.” Man and woman, the masculine and the feminine, male and female are complementary opposites and any hierarchical position between does not imply exclusion: in other words, “opposites are inclusive, not exclusive.” However, for many people these relations are considered to belong to the realms of symbolism, myth, and Andean essentialism, due to their lack of understanding of the essence (authentic nature) of the cultures that have developed in the Andes, in particular the Aymara culture, in which the profound spirituality of the Aymara man and woman transcends social, political, economic, and cultural structures, since the material and the spiritual always work together and complement each other and there is a deep sense of dialogue with the guiding spirits achachila, uywiri, pachamama, and ispalla. Therefore, each stage of life in the Andean world is always accompanied by ritual celebrations which

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are a reciprocal form of engagement with the pachamama and achachila, providing offerings for the guiding spirits and protectors who inhabit and take care of the socio-community space. In  Aymara culture, the complementary dualism of chacha-warmi signifies similar statuses, horizontal relations, and equal conditions which aim to preserve the equilibrium and harmony of the cosmos and apply not only to the newly married couple, but also their relations with their family, community, nature, and the deities.

Notes 1 The  different analytical categories that have been constructed for societies which predate the nation state have been given various names, including “tribes,” “natives,” “ethnicities,” “traditional peoples,” “ethnic minorities,” “populations,” and “peoples,” to which the social and anthropological sciences have attributed countless meanings. To a certain extent, the issue has been resolved with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which proposed using the collective term “indigenous peoples” for a wide range of societies whose political, economic, social, and cultural structures are different from the established system, and who have their own set of ideas, world view, and way of interrelating with their territory. 2 Both characteristics—the anthropocentric and the hegemonic—were crucial in establishing the hierarchical differences, prohibitions, and conditions that create social and power structures. In addition, this reinforces the division of the public (male) sphere and private (female) sphere, the latter regulated by the former and determined by male power. 3 Different disciplines, particularly the social sciences, began to define and use the category of gender, since it can be employed to demonstrate how biological difference is converted into economic, social, and political inequality between women and men, situating the determiners of inequality between the sexes within the symbolic, cultural, and historical. 4 Just, cited by Stolcke, argues that the notion of race, an earlier biological alternative to ethnicity, now subsumed by it, aimed to emphasize the cultural nature of group attributes by naturalizing them. Even when group attributes such as territory, historical continuity, language, and culture are merely indicators of belonging to a certain ethnic group and do not serve as a generic definition of ethnicity, “ethnicity, ethnic identity, preserves an independent existence, an essential definition, even if this definition is prudently left unexpressed” ( Just apud Stolcke 2000: 38). 5 The term Andes is a spatial denomination nowadays used to define the 7200 km mountainous area or mountain range which runs from north to south through South America passing through seven countries (Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina). Characterized by sharply contrasting environments, it is one of the few places on the planet that contains extensive inhabited areas up to an altitude of 4500 m, which are used for very diverse types of agriculture (Enríquez Salas 2005). 6 The word pachamama has been translated as “earth-mother” and “mother-nature,” expressions which are sometimes inadequate in terms of understanding the Aymara dimension, which expresses deep wisdom, since it refers to more than the earth and its natural resources and more than living communities. It is everything in the Andean world which is continuously recreated in the search for harmony and equilibrium. It is the portion of the natural community in which a human community lives, creating and being created, and protected by a mountain that is home to the community of deities (Grillo Fernández 1993: 16).

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7 This statement also emphasizes the fact that “there are as many ways of thinking as there are cultures.” In this case, I would highlight the contrast between two systems of ideas: the Western and the Andean. The former can be characterized as hierarchical, anthropocentric, and uniform, whereas the latter is diverse, balanced, and variable. Peña Cabrera (1993) notes the radical differences between the two systems of thought: (a) Westerners move from the universal to the particular and individual and adopt the scientific method as the paradigm for their way of thinking, whereas Andeans understand the concrete and the detailed and are fundamentally intuitive; (b) Western knowledge is general and totalizing and has a tendency to view nature as uniform, while Andeans tend toward diversification and variety, not only respecting plurality, but also enriching it; (c) Westerners focus on knowledge of laws or universal orders which enable them to control and dominate their reality, whereas Andeans seek coexistence with nature and immersion within it, as a source of life and renewal; (d) Westerners adopted machinery as a means of production early in their history, whereas Andeans have never allowed any instrument to stand between them and nature, since their relation with nature is vital and magical; and (e) in Western thinking, the future is open, as pure possibility, whereas the past is closed, in contrast to the Andeans, who believe that the past, with its wealth of concrete experiences, stands before them (Peña Cabrera 1993: 15–18). 8 In order to explain this relationality, Juárez analyses different spheres, enabling him to explain the duality of the relations present in each objective and subjective event experienced by the Aymaras, highlighting the neutralizing, mediating, intermediary element which emerges in these relations ( Juárez Mamani 2007). 9 In the West, these differences established between men and women, produced within a gender system which links practices, rights, obligations, representations, norms, and social values to each gender, have systematically created inequality and discrimination against women, which is socially reproduced through very powerful channels. Hence, the conceptual categories which have emerged from gender theory and feminism see this as the grounds for proclaiming the existence of Andean patriarchy. 10 Arnold (1992) extends its origins to include Inca culture. 11 Arnold highlights this link between small mountains and the female gender in the various ch’alla ceremonies held to honor the small mountains when building a house, since they provide the necessary materials, including the straw used for thatching, the wood for the roof, the firewood used in the home, and the shrubs used as building materials. They are associated both with agricultural production and the supply of materials needed for construction and domestic tasks. Other gender attributes associated with materials for building a house can be identified in wood, associated with men, and straw, associated with women; stone associated with men, and clay, associated with women. Even the straw used to thatch the roof is differentiated: the upper, lighter layer is masculine and the lower, heavier layer, which is mixed with clay and also used in the beams, is feminine (Arnold 1992: 50, 61, 62). 12 In  the Andean world, the sun and moon are deities: man is descended from the masculine sun deity (wilka tata) and woman from the feminine moon deity (ph’axsi mama). 13 In Aymara, simillt’aña is a term used to describe the act of singing to the crops, indicating the basic inseparability of the gender of the song and the physical act of sowing the seeds. In morphological terms, the word means “scattering seeds” and comes from the Spanish word “semilla” (seed), with the suffix t’a indicating the fleeting action of scattering small grains individually on the land (Arnold et al. 1992: 114). 14 This complementary dualism is also reflected in every act and ritual that takes place during the 3 days of the jaqichasiña celebrations (the Aymara wedding). Therefore, it is very important that, from start to finish, everything is paired since this is the chachawarmi celebration, with the food, beer, alcohol, and other items being served in pairs.

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15 However, becoming jaqi is not restricted to matrimony, but extends to other acts: the birth of a child (wawanijaña), the death of a family member ( jiwxaña), building a new house with the help of one’s in-laws, godparents, and relatives, which is considered reciprocal labor (utachthapiña), sharing potato seeds (satthapiña), animals, agricultural produce, and even land for crops (tuti waxt’aña). See Pérez Quispe et al. (2008: 17–18). 16 Containing three elements: spirit, mind, and soul. 17 Morphologically, the word jaqichasiña can be broken down into jaqi, which means “person” or “people” and the suffixes: cha, meaning affection, si, which expresses transformation of the self, and ña, which indicates action, fulfillment, and the condition or state of subject. 18 In Aymara marriage, ayni has two connotations: on the one hand, phuqaña, which means meeting a commitment or repaying previous aid and, on the other hand, machaq ayni, which involves helping the couple who are about to marry by offering gifts (blankets, clothing, cooking utensils, money, or drinks) which must be repaid in kind. 19 Arku has the same connotations as ayni, but refers particularly to the system of reciprocal aid which involves a considerable sum of money. 20 The apxata is also a wedding present, involving cooperation in kind or livestock for the parents of the engaged couple until 1 day before the wedding, which will also have to be repaid in the same way. 21 The new chacha-warni couple is seen as a new-born child in terms of tama (the new life as a married couple) and needs guidance.

References Alcántara Hernández, Arrufo (2010), “Bases conceptuales de la culture y la matriz cultural Andean”, in Curso teorías de la culture Andean, segunda especialización en cultura-tecnología Andean e interculturalidad. Puno: Escuela Profesional de Antropología, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales de la Universidad Nacional del Altiplano. Arnold, Denise Y. (1992), “La casa de adobes y piedras del Inka: Gender, memoria y cosmos en Qaqachaka”, in Arnold, Denise Y. (ed.), Hacia un orden Andean de las cosas. La Paz: Hisbol, 31–107. Arnold, Denise Y., Jiménez Aruquipa, Domingo, and Yapita, Juan de Dios (1992), “Simillt’aña pensamientos compartidos acerca de algunas canciones a los productos de un ayllu Andean”, in Arnold, Denise Y. (ed.), Hacia un orden Andean de las cosas. La Paz: Hisbol, 109–173. Arteaga Montero,Vivian (1990), La mujer aymara urbana. La Paz: Gregoria Apaza. Choque Canqui, Roberto (1992),“Historia”, in Berg, Hans van den, and Schiffers, Norbert (eds.), La cosmovisión aymara. Bolivia: UCB/Hisbol, 59–80. Choque Quispe, María Eugenia (2007), Equidad de gender en las culturas aymaras y qhichwa. Bolivia: CEBEM. Enríquez Salas, Porfirio (2005), Cultura Andean. Puno: CARE Perú and Dirección Regional de Educación Puno. Estermann, José (1997), “Filosofía Andean: Elementos para la reivindicación del pensamiento colonizado”, Cuaderno de Investigación en Cultura y Tecnología Andean, 12. Available at www.iecta.cl/cuadernos.htm, accessed in June 2017. Grillo Fernández, Eduardo (1993), “La cosmovisión Andean de siempre y la cosmología occidental moderna”, in Desarrollo o descolonización en los Andes. Lima: Proyecto Andean de Tecnologías Campesinas —PRATEC, 7–61.

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Grillo Fernández, Eduardo (1996),“¿Desarrollo o afirmación cultural andina en los Andes?”, in Grillo Fernández, Eduardo (ed.), Caminos Andinos de Siempre. Lima: PRATEC, 63–93. Juárez Mamani, Juan (2007), “Pacha”, blog Realidad Aymara, de 7  de julho. Available at http://juanjuma.blogspot.com/2007/07/pacha-filosofa-aymara.html (accessed August 2016). Mamani M., Manuel (1999), “Chacha-warmi: Paradigma e identidad matrimonial aymara en la provincia de Parinacota”, Chungara  – Revista de Antropología Chilena, 31(2), 307–317. doi:10.4067/S0717–73561999000100005. Murguialday, Clara (2002), “Gender”, in Pérez de Armiño, Karlos (ed.), Diccionario de acción humanitaria y cooperación al desarrollo. Bilbau: Icaria y Hegoa. Peña Cabrera, Antonio (1993), “Racionalidad occidental y racionalidad andina”, Cuaderno de Investigación en Cultura y Tecnología Andean, 2. Available at www.iecta.cl/cuadernos. htm (accessed June 2016). Pérez Quispe, Julio et al. (2008), Pacha jaqichasiña masachakuy. Bolivia:Verbo Divino. Stolcke, Verena (2000), “¿Es el sexo para el gender lo que la raza para la etnicidad… y la naturaleza para la sociedad?”, Política y Cultura, 14, 25–60. Torres Chuquimia, Juan (2010), “El significado y sentido del suma jaqi”, in Curso Tecnología Médica Andina, segunda especialización cultura-tecnología Andina e interculturalidad. Puno: Escuela Profesional de Antropología, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales de la Universidad Nacional del Altiplano.

Part III

The Arts and the Senses in the Epistemologies of the South

7 TOWARD AN AESTHETICS OF THE EPISTEMOLOGIES OF THE SOUTH Manifesto in Twenty-Two Theses Boaventura de Sousa Santos

1. We live in a world dominated by three main forms of domination that have been with us throughout the modern era: capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy (Santos 2018). They are so intimately interconnected that none of them operates in isolation. However, the social forces that have been resisting against modern domination have usually focused on one of these forms and rarely on all of them. As a consequence, anti-capitalist struggles have often been colonialist, racist, and sexist in character, while anti-colonialist or anti-racial struggles have often condoned capitalism and hetero-patriarchy, and anti-patriarchal struggles have often been capitalist and colonialist or racist in character. The tragedy of our time is that domination operates as a coordinated totality, while resistance against it is fragmented. 2. This pattern of domination, rather than being a mere economic or political model, is a Eurocentric civilizational paradigm. It is served by an immense body of hegemonic knowledges—the epistemologies of the North—based on the negation of the inhabitants and knowledges of the territories that are subjected to colonization and exploitation and which I call the global South. The  epistemologies of the North are the knowledge structure this civilizational paradigm has developed to legitimize itself. By ignoring the underlying articulation among the three main forms of domination, these epistemologies contribute to disarm social resistance against them. Under global neoliberalism, such disarmament has reached an extreme level illustrated by the idea that there is no alternative to the status quo, as supposedly proven by the failure of all attempts in the last 100 years to change it in substantive ways. However, as the most brutal forms of exploitation—exclusion, discrimination, inequality, and

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3.

4.

5.

6.

the failure to recognize non-Eurocentric alterity—emerge or re-emerge and reach unprecedented levels in the wake of imperialism’s increasing aggressiveness, and as the ecological crisis deepens and political, physical, and ontological violence explodes out of control, it becomes all too evident that more than ever we need alternatives to this nightmarish status quo that thrives on destroying life, both human and non-human (Santos 2018). We don’t need alternatives; we rather need an alternative thinking of alternatives. Oppressed social groups all over the world go on resisting against the different forms of domination and proposing alternatives to the status quo and often putting them in practice within their territories or contexts. But their struggles, waged in the global South, are either not known or discredited by the hegemonic epistemologies of the North and the political interests served by the latter. In any case, such struggles become vulnerable and bound to be neutralized. In order to confront such neutralization, an alternative thinking is called for. The epistemologies of the South “occupy” the hegemonic epistemologies of the North in order to generate knowledges otherwise. The epistemologies of the South are multilocal procedures to identify and validate knowledges born in struggles against capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy, produced by the social groups and classes that have suffered most with the injustices caused by such domination. In  its struggle against oppression and domination, each separate culture emerges as an important vector of resistance and knowledge production. The  epistemologies of the South aim at valorizing such knowledges and thereby rearming and strengthening the resistance against oppression, discrimination, and domination. Just as imperialist domination has a vital need to exert cultural oppression, so every liberation struggle is, of necessity, an act of culture (Coomaraswamy 1927; Cabral 1979). There is no global social justice without global cognitive justice. The epistemologies of the South do not question, in principle, the validity of modern science. They only refuse its claim to be the only valid knowledge, as well as the arbitrary split between sciences and arts. Social struggles rely, in general, on a variety of different knowledges already available, scientific knowledge included, and generate new knowledges as they proceed. As they combine and articulate different kinds of knowledges, they compile ecologies of knowledges. The epistemologies of the South aim at recovering and valorizing such knowledges and the articulations among them. To do so, they propose a conception of Eurocentric modern domination completely at odds with the one propounded by the epistemologies of the North (Santos 2016). Sub-humanity is constitutive of the modern conception of humanity. To a large extent, colonialism is as much part of our contemporary reality as capitalism and hetero-patriarchy. Colonialism didn’t

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end with the independence of the European colonies. It  only adopted other forms, not dependent on physical territorial occupation by a foreign country (Nkrumah 1965). While capitalism is premised upon the formal equality of all human beings, both colonialism and patriarchy are based on the ontological degradation of certain groups of human beings. These are considered inferior and sub-human and treated as such (Fanon 1967; Federici 2004; Pérez Orozco 2014). Modern domination operates on the basis of an abyssal line that separates humanity from sub-humanity and converts them into two mutually incommensurable realities. The epistemologies of the North provide the ontological, epistemological, and political foundation for this line, whose abyssal nature resides in the radically violent and efficient way in which the imperial North ensures the ceaseless exclusion and exploitation of the global South (Santos 2007: 45–89). It is therefore imperative to explain the intimate connection between the epistemic project and the imperial political project that constructs the other as a non-human being, devoid of either knowledge or aesthetic sentiment. Beauty is key to telling humans from non-humans. But there is no shared idea of beauty that may apply to all communities and political interests. 7. Modern forms of social life are divided into metropolitan sociability and colonial sociability and are kept apart by the abyssal line. Metropolitan sociability—the field where imperial legitimacy is politically generated—is the mode of operation of modern domination between formally equal human beings. Social exclusion does exist, but it is not abyssal, in the sense that it is governed by norms only possible in a community of formally equal human beings. Colonial sociability is the mode of operation of modern domination between unequal human beings, i.e., between fullfledged human beings and sub-human beings. Social exclusion is here abyssal, as it is ruled by norms that can only be imposed on sub-human beings. Metropolitan sociability is the zone of being upon which the epistemologies of the North have built all modern universal ideals. Colonial sociability is the zone of non-being, as Fanon pointedly put it (1963, 1967). The knowledges produced by the populations subjected to colonial sociability are either silenced or made invisible, irrelevant, or non-existent. This is what epistemicide (Santos 1998: 103), the marginalization or massive exclusion caused by the epistemologies of the North, is all about. By denouncing this phenomenon, the epistemologies of the South open new and immensely diverse landscapes of knowledges otherwise. 8. For  the epistemologies of the South, there is no single general aesthetics. The epistemic dislocation proposed by the epistemologies of the South disrupts in fundamental ways the credibility of general, universal, culturally monolithic conceptions of beauty, creativity, space-time, aura, authorship, orality, and so on, and so forth. It denounces the radical partiality of the metropolitan sociability on the basis of which modern

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aesthetic conceptions have claimed to be universal, that is, valid, irrespective of the context in which they were generated. In  other words, the epistemologies of the North generate a unique aesthetic canon and seek to export it to the rest of the world as a prescriptive benchmark, together with a hierarchical, class-based separation between art and craft. At  the same time, in recent decades, many global financial institutions have become major players in the international art world. In connection with auction houses (which try to get as much money as possible for the works of art), they have had a considerable influence in making the rates of return on investment the primary determinants of “good” art. 9. The  epistemologies of the South call for a new aesthetics, the aesthetics of the South, a plurality of artistic post-abyssal creative practices born in the struggles against capitalism, colonialism, and heteropatriarchy. There  are thus two main aesthetics paradigms, the aesthetics of the North and aesthetics of the South. The aesthetics of the North are abyssal aesthetics, as they ignore or are unaware of the existence of the abyssal line separating the zones of being from the zones of non-being and the epistemic, aesthetic, ethic, political, and cultural consequences of such a separation. They accept on their face value all the conventional artistic dogmas of universality, spatiality, temporality, and creativity. On the contrary, the aesthetics of the South take the abyssal line as the founding vector of their creativity. From the vantage point of the epistemologies of the South, the art of other cultures, and the aesthetic theories developed outside the paradigm of the epistemologies of the North can provide the key to other pasts and new futures. 10. For the epistemologies of the South, the key dichotomy is between abyssal and post-abyssal artists rather than between metropolitan and colonial artists. The  artists that adopt the aesthetics of the North are abyssal artists; those that embrace the aesthetics of the South are post-abyssal artists. They  denounce the existence of the abyssal line and seek to overcome it through their art. The history of global art is not the history of world art, but it has been turned into a history of the art of many a hybrid object, the end result of processes of circulation and exchange, of art objects once created in the global South, but stolen amid the violence of capitalism and colonialism. These objects are now an important part of the museum collections of the global North (Sarr and Savoy 2018). This is the history of the art produced by neoliberal globalization. In light of the hegemony of the aesthetics of the North, what we often call contemporary art is in fact but a small portion of the art produced in our time, the part that is promoted by conventional curators and the global elites (Elkins, 2006: 19). 11. The post-abyssal artist is an especially prominent practitioner of the epistemologies of the South. In  a time so widely characterized

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by the drought or lack of alternatives, the centrality of art for the epistemologies of the South resides in the fact that the post-abyssal artist is best equipped to bring together in the same artistic artifact or event the denunciation of the three main forms of modern domination and the articulations among them. By doing so, she overcomes the curse of fragmentation haunting resistance against modern domination. At the same time, she is in a better position than anybody else to problematize the roots of art in the epistemologies of the North—an egotistic, elitist, individualistic, and market-driven type of art, predominantly focused on form. This is in sharp contrast to many non-Eurocentric forms of artistic practice, which tend to view art as communal, non-commercial, functional, and holistic, a part of people’s daily experience and of their lives (Assefa 2015: iii). 12. The  post-abyssal artist lives in constant confrontation with the canon and its gatekeepers. Since the artistic canon officializes art, and hegemonic art is the one following the codes of the aesthetics of the North, the canon is always confronting the post-abyssal artist with a hostile posture. Insurgent curators, acting as gate openers, are crucial for the recognition of the post-abyssal artist. Insurgent curators distinguish between two types of post-abyssal artists: those who received artistic training in the context of metropolitan sociability and overcame it successfully, and those with other types of (but not excluding metropolitan—Barndt 2011) training. 13. The post-abyssal artist is an absent artist before becoming an artist of absences. The post-abyssal artist focuses on those artistic forms and practices occurring on the other side of the line (the side of non-being), i.e., forms and practices that are considered by the aesthetics of the North to be monstrous, blasphemous, primitive, or non-existent. The  aesthetics of the South revolve around the creativity of the life experiences and social practices of those populations that are forced to live on the other side of the line—colonial sociability; they focus on their resistances and desistances, on their own ideas about the abyssal line, and the concrete or imagined possibilities of overcoming it. The  post-abyssal artist responds deeply and intuitively to the indignity of subjecting human beings to the condition of sub-humanity. She  is a creator of humanity, which is tantamount to expanding the possibility of re-imagining our world. As the great Ugandan artist Okot p’Bitek once wrote, the artist “carves his moral standards on wood and stone, and paints his colorful ‘dos and don’ts’ on walls and canvas” (1986: 40). In Europe, Adrian Paci and Carlo Levi are some the best exemplars of an artistic rendition of the abyssal line—the former with his Centro di Permanenza temporanea,1 and the latter with his 1945 book Cristo si è fermato a Eboli (Christ Stopped at Eboli), which portrays the unspeakable sub-humanity of the dwellers of the caves in Matera, where he had been exiled by Mussolini. The post-abyssal artist is a consummate practitioner of the sociology of absences.

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14. The  post-abyssal artist is a not-yet artist before becoming the artist of the not-yet. The not-yet artist (Bloch 1995) is an emerging artist. According to Gamedze (2015), it is possible to expand the dimension of art so that “when we talk about art, we are speaking of a conscious, creative approach that is in response to images, and through response, creates its own images.” The post-abyssal artist has to struggle for recognition while subverting the rules that govern that very recognition. She specializes in the not-yet, the emergent, the latent, the potential, whatever is on its way to be recognized and to add innovatively to the artistic present. She creates mental ideas and landscapes that transcend the false inevitability of a truncated present. This often entails combining the very ancient resources with the most recent or technologically “advanced” ones. One of the most impressive demonstrations of the capacity of art to cause new alternatives to emerge is the Orchestra of Indigenous Instruments and New Technologies,2 created and directed by Alejandro Iglesias Rossi at the University of UNTREF, Buenos Aires. The post-abyssal artist is a consummate practitioner of the sociology of emergences. 15. The  post-abyssal artist is an expert at tracing the abyssal line, thereby interrupting the present. By affirming and denouncing the abyssal line, the post-abyssal artist contracts the present and exposes its partiality (read metropolitan sociability, as only this side of the abyssal line). At the same time, she expands the present by showing and inventing the non-official artistic present, along with the forms and practices generated by the resistance against colonial sociability (read the other side of the line). The interruption of the present is grounded on a double exercise of radical remembrance of oppression and radical anticipation of liberation. 16. The post-abyssal artist thrives on the creation of third values or entities. Dichotomic polarizations or binaries prevent the monstrosity of colonial sociability from becoming aesthetically intelligible. The  postabyssal artist is an expert in imagining third values or entities that stand outside such binaries. The following abyssal binaries are of great importance: society/nature, individual/community, and immanent/transcendent. This  means that the post-abyssal artist recognizes the deep and deeply entangled interpenetrations generated in the contact zones forged by Eurocentric modernity over the last 500 years. But these third values or entities are the post-abyssal way of imagining differences without hierarchies, of moving beyond the colonial, capitalist, and hetero-patriarchal hierarchies. Third values are at the origin of the pluriverse. 17. The post-abyssal artist is an artist whose art is created with rather than about or upon. Specializing in absences and emergences, the post-abyssal artist creates her art very much as a craftsperson does, and indeed she learns from other craftspersons who do not  aspire to become artists. Post-abyssal authorship is built upon the ruins of such dichotomies characteristic of the

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aesthetics of the North as abstract ideals/concrete artwork, subject/object, and individual/community. The post-abyssal artist is neither an auratic individual nor an undifferentiated cog of the community. Her presence in art is similar to the one envisaged by Okot p’Bitek when he wrote that the true African artist has his eyes firmly fixed, not to some abstract idea called beauty “up there” as it were, but on the philosophy of life of his society. His voice, the thunder of his drums, the vibrating of her buttocks, and the slashing of the sky with his horn, the wood or stone curved into a figureless figure  of a—is it ghost?—are his contributions to the celebration of real life here and now. (1986: 23) 18. The post-abyssal artist is a cantilever. Like a cantilever lamp post, the beam of her creativity is fixed at one end and loose at the other. The light is shed by the free end and illuminates not only the two sides of the abyssal line, but the line itself. Depending on the movements of the beam, darkness and light may be equally distributed between metropolitan sociability and colonial sociability. The post-abyssal artist interrupts the modern division that views metropolitan sociability as light and colonial sociability as darkness. The post-abyssal artist sees light in darkness and darkness in light. And her vision goes beyond the imperative of sight, to express multiple emotions and senses. 19. The  post-abyssal artist specializes in struggle, experience, and corporeality. Specifically, she specializes in struggles of liberation and emancipation, in the experience of abyssal exclusion, the corporeality of enslaved, racialized, and sexualized bodies. From the Arabian Peninsula to the Red Sea, Sudanese cartoonist Abu’Obayda Mohamed has created heart-wrenching pieces that capture the painful reality experienced by the inhabitants of these parts of the world. In his words,“art is not always about pretty things; [it] is about who we are, [it] is the reflection of what is happening in our lives and how it affects our lives.”3 20. The  post-abyssal artist walks on the abyssal line. No matter how or where the fixed end of the beam of light, sound, or any of the other senses is located, the artist becomes a post-abyssal creative activist provided her art aims at being lived and felt on both sides. This is only possible by walking on the line. Such walking destabilizes the abyssal line and may even dislocate it. The  post-abyssal artist works continuously toward the reconfiguration of a new sense of territory, spreading a planetary coexistence that challenges the asymmetric relations of power that still define our present. The post-abyssal artist is an acrobat. She is a refugee who inhabits simultaneously the internment camps and her native home town. In this sense, her art mirrors historical and cultural processes that need to be recognized. It’s not just the artistic object that counts, but the processes that constitute it and the way of bringing these processes to the light.

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21. The  post-abyssal artist is a monstrous translator. She  translates the abyssal exclusions that characterize colonial sociability into aesthetic motives and forms that are monstrous and intelligible at one and the same time. The  monstrosity of the artist consists in showing the ontological degradation and the fabricated absence of which colonial, patriarchal sociability is made. Art is sketching, drawing, painting, performing, and savoring, in order to document, educate, and motivate. An artist like Yinka Shonibare, MBE,4 deliberately remakes Europe’s past in Africa and what unites Africa’s present in Europe. To recuperate, reproduce, and redress the past in this manner is to avoid simple arrangements or rigid attachments. The monstrous historical and cultural flows in Shonibare’s works mirror contemporary art with stories of complex belonging.5 22. The post-abyssal artist is an active promoter of new possibilities. As an amplifier of the not-yet, the post-abyssal artist turns ruins into seeds, invents new territories as liberated zones, and old territories as counterhegemonic time-spaces. Her ultimate goal is a vision that encompasses all people, while recognizing differences unmarked by any hierarchy; to imagine and give visibility to a new society, a cooperative, loving world, free of oppression and limited only by the imagination. The great task of the post-abyssal artist is to create art which cannot be ignored and which urges us to fight for freedom from oppression. Her subjectivity entails subversion. She  trains herself to address problems that cannot be solved under the conditions of modern domination. By doing so, she becomes an unconditional defender of alternatives.

Notes 1 See https://welldesignedandbuilt.com/2012/03/02/adrian-paci-centro-di-permanenzatemporanea/, accessed in February 2019. 2 See https://untref.edu.ar/mundountref/orquesta-instrumentos-autoctonos-nuevastecnologias-xirgu, accessed in February 2019. 3 See www.okayafrica.com/young-sudanese-art-is-fueling-the-protest-revolution/, accessed in February 2019. 4 Ironically, Shonibare’s name insists on the historical paradox of his being a member of the British Empire (MBE). 5 See www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/yinka_shonibare_mbe/, accessed in February 2019.

References Assefa, Kalkidan (2015), “Artist’s Statement: What Decolonization of Art Means to Me”, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 4 (2): i–v. Barndt, Deborah (ed.) (2011), Viva! Community Arts and Popular Education in the Americas. New York: State University of New York. Bloch, Ernst (1995), The Principle of Hope:Volume II. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

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Cabral, Amilcar (1979), “National Liberation and Culture”, in Unity and Struggle: Speeches and Writings. New York: Monthly Press, 138–154. Coomaraswamy, Ananda K. (1927), History of Indian and Indonesian Art. London: Goldston. Elkins, James (2006), “Art History as a Global Discipline”, in Elkins, James (ed.), Is Art History Global? New York: Routledge, 3–23. Fanon, Franz (1963), The Wretched of the Earth (pref. by Jean-Paul Sartre). New York: Grove Press. Fanon, Franz (1967), Black Skin,White Masks. New York: Grove Press. Federici, Silvia (2004), Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia. Gamedze, Thuli (2015), Decolonization as Art Practice, available at https://africanah.org/ decolonization-as-art-practice/, accessed in February 2019. Levi, Carlo (1963), Cristo si è fermato a Eboli. Torino: Einaudi. Nkrumah, Kwame (1965), Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. London: Thomas Nelson & Sons. P’bitek, Okot (1986), Artist, the Ruler: Essays on Art, Culture and Values. Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers. Pérez Orozco, Amaia (2014), Subversión Feminista de la Economía: Aportes para un debate sobre el conflicto capital-vida. Madrid: Traficantes de Sueños. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (1998), “The Fall of the Angelus Novus: Beyond the Modern Game of Roots and Options”, Current Sociology, 46 (2): 81–118. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2007), “Beyond Abyssal Thinking: From Global Lines to Ecologies of Knowledges”, Review, XXX, 1, 45–89. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2016), Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide. New York: Routledge. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2018), The End of the Cognitive Empire: The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South. Durham: Duke University Press. Sarr, Felwine, and Savoy, Bénédicte (2018), Rapport sur la restitution du patrimoine culturel africain.Vers une nouvelle éthique relationnelle. Paris, rapport commandé par le Président de la République Française, N°2018-2026.

8 WHAT’S IN A NAME? Utopia—Sociology—Poetry Maria Irene Ramalho

As Jameson (2005), among others, has shown, the varieties of “utopia” are vast, and its name has been vastly banalized. It all started in the sixteenth century with Utopia (1515–1516), Thomas More’s invention of a name for an invented non-place.1 In a well-known passage of The Tempest (II.1), Shakespeare parodies More’s Utopia much as More himself had already gently mocked his own projection of an imagined better place whose very name denies its existence. Antonio’s and Sebastian’s coarse, satirical gibes at Gonzalo’s dream of a good place, or eu-topia, underscore its utter placelessness, or implausible u-topia proper.2 Moreover, at the end of The  Tempest, Shakespeare has Prospero renounce his magical powers in his usurped, idyllic island and return to the world of realpolitik, where before he had not  been very competent at all, his banishment having been the outcome. Utopia, the book, thus remains the only possible utopia, the creative fiction (or “science” fiction) of a better commonwealth imagined by an idealist humanist, appalled at the glaringly unjust power structures of his own society, but somewhat skeptical about radical, social, and political change. Just think of the strange names More picks for the geography of his utopian commonwealth: the island: Utopia—“nowhere;” the capital: Amautorum—“darkling city”, perhaps evoking the foggy London of More’s time; its river: Anydrus—“waterless;” its ruler: Ademus—“peopleless;” and how ironically he comments on them in his second letter to Peter Giles.3 The  names, he claims, are as he was told, not  of his own invention; were he to invent them, he adds, he would not be so “stupid’ as to come up with such “barbarous and meaningless names.” Besides, his narrator, as “More”, conveniently forgets to ask the Portuguese traveler called Raphael (“God’s messenger?”) Hythlodaeus (“expert in nonsense?”) about the exact location of

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the island named Utopia he came across in his travels with Amerigo Vespucci throughout the New World. Or perhaps “More” did ask, but someone’s inopportune cough prevented him from hearing Hythloday’s reply.4 Shakespeare, too, deals with power and oppression in his work, but his ways of imagining possible escape always end in restoration, as The Tempest clearly shows. After glimpses of possible transformation, be it good or bad or ambivalent, any change appears skewed and the old order always gets restored, with the same inequalities and oppressions, albeit with different actors. Except perhaps in poetry. At the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, we hear of three kinds of utopists, that is to say, types of individuals who refuse to be reconciled with the way things are: the lunatic, the lover, and the poet are, we learn, “of imagination all compact.” The lunatic sees but things forever out of joint and forever in need of mending; the lover is blindly overwhelmed by love alone; and only the poet is capable of giving a local habitation and a name to his imaginings, even if only imaginings of such airy nothings as utopian longings (like those created by Thomas More). I will deal with these three Shakespearean “compacts of imagination” in turn. First, the lover, then the lunatic, and finally the poet. The  “What’s in a name?” of my title is taken from Shakespeare as well: Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare, 1960). When Juliet Capulet finds herself helplessly in love with the scion of the mortal enemies of her family, the Montagues, she engages in a clever Hermogenes-like discourse on language in order to extricate Romeo from his family name.5 Here is Juliet’s speech that will prompt Romeo to discard his surname and eagerly be but “love” as “new baptized” (Romeo and Juliet, II.ii.37–50): Tis but thy name that is my enemy; Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What’s Montague? it is nor hand nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What’s in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet; So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d, Retain that dear perfection which he owes Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name, And for that name which is no part of thee Take all myself. Absolute love oblivious of social context, or love in a bell jar, as it were, is the utopia of Romeo and Juliet, an impossible name for an impossible condition of being. What is in a name? A lot, actually. Though Hermogenes has a point about

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convention arbitrarily tying together name and thing named, Cratylus does too: names may have a way of belonging to things. Romeo and Juliet are nothing without their family names. Their family names are to them like hand or foot or arm or face. Romeo Montague could no more doff his family name than Juliet Capulet hers. Without the names that place them in their society, Romeo and Juliet are as good as dead. In the end, the ultimate no-place of their utopian love could not but be the grave—indeed, the family vault. Many utopian thinkers, particularly those who dream of a more just society and believe in fighting for it, have been, and continue to be, graced with the label “lunatic”, either explicitly or implicitly, More not excluded. Samuel Butler’s 1872 Erewhon (the word “nowhere” messed up) can be read as a caricature of More’s Utopia. Undermining More’s title by mimicry right at the onset, Erewhon is definitely no utopia. Resorting to the myth of idyllic expansion in an overcrowded England to project the image of a colonized space that presents itself as Englishness perfected, Erewhon is more than a parodic simulacrum of Victorian society.6 Unlike More’s Utopia imagining an improved sixteenth century European society by considering other, alien, experiences, Erewhon is a nineteenth century apology for hierarchical English culture and authority as the right model for development, colonization, civilization, and progress (cf. Zamska 2002). True social utopists, on the contrary, dare to imagine that which might endanger the relative comfort of a hegemonic status quo by stubbornly refusing to believe that there is no alternative. That is why—in this our time of entrenched market interests, financial offshores, increasing economic inequalities, resilient neocolonialisms, exclusive walls, razor wire borders, scandalous war profiteering, murderous prejudices, and unwelcome refugees—social and political utopists are no longer deemed just lunatics by the status quo; they are targeted to be discredited if not altogether silenced. Often such utopists present themselves pre-emptively as what we might call “lunatics.” Alberto Pimenta, to my mind, the greatest living Portuguese poet, has these wise words to say about current views on utopia, utopists, and imagination: “Utopias are not delirious at all: utopias try to control delirium; utopias are the good sense and measure contesting the chaos and excesses of reality.” And, with a fair amount of sarcasm: “Opinion makers, politicians, journalists, mentors of all sorts increasingly suggest that everything would run smoothly if it weren’t for human beings; it’s human beings who prevent utopias from being realized” (Pimenta 1995: 288, 293).7 Of imagination all compact, the social utopist I bring with me today, though suspecting that he may be minded by only just a few, writes and fights bravely to have the extremely unfair place we live in really reinvented for the better. Several years ago, Boaventura de Sousa Santos chose a telling title for one of his essays: Don’t Shoot the Utopist (Santos 1995). Such was the title of the last chapter of a book in which the Portuguese sociologist argued eloquently for a new

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common sense in law, science, and politics in a world that was, and still is, steadily slipping into extreme social inequality and unfairness. He writes at the beginning of the chapter: By utopia I mean the exploration by imagination of new modes of human possibility and styles of will, and the confrontation by imagination of the necessity of whatever exists— just because it exists—on behalf of something radically better that is worth fighting for, and to which humanity is fully entitled. (Santos 1995: 479; my italics) After offering a survey of Western society and culture in the twentieth century, in the course of which he denounced the three major pillars of domination accountable for injustice, oppression, and exclusion—colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy—, Santos went on to imagine forms of how to change the current, oppressive, and discriminatory ways of the world we live in. Fully aware of the utopian nature of his thinking, he chose a title that might somehow pre-empt the inevitable criticisms of his idealistic and presumably impractical proposals. Don’t shoot the messenger, he pleads, don’t shoot the messenger of utopia as possible good news. What seems utopian today, the implication is, may well be an idea fulfilled tomorrow. Utopia, that is, as a way of knowing that does not reduce reality to what exists; rather, an epistemology that nurtures the daily struggle for a better life for all. Santos has never stopped envisioning utopian thinking as a means to help conceive of a possible better world. Utopia, therefore, as an idealized no-place (or u-topia) on a possible way to becoming realized as a better place (or eu-topia). Or perhaps, as Fátima Vieira once suggested, actually drawing on Santos’s thinking, utopia as a “search, a quest pushing us forever onwards, preventing us from staying put” (Vieira 2012: 8). In other words, preventing us from conforming to that which is. As Santos himself puts it in another essay, “non-conformity is the will’s utopia” (1998: 99). In a lecture delivered at the University of Coimbra School of Economics in 2016, drawing also on his recent Epistemologies of the South (Santos 2014), Santos went back to the topic by beginning by asking, “Is It  Possible to Be Utopian Today?”, only to consider such a question a “bad” one and reformulate it as, “Is It Necessary to Be Utopian Today?” Needless to say, his answer is a rotund “YES.”8 The twentieth century, he begins by acknowledging in this lecture, because of the reformism derived from Western modernism’s belief in infinite progress and in its own sense of superiority vis-à-vis any other culture, was relatively hostile to other thinking, let alone utopian thinking. If, as social belief had it, society (read,“Western society”) can go on becoming more and more perfect, amelioration being irreversible, the perfect society is not immediately necessary. Progress will inevitably bring it about. Such was the progressivist ethos of the twentieth century: what is necessary is possible, what is not possible is not necessary—or not yet necessary.

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Faced with such a totalizing approach, impatient non-conformists like Boaventura de Sousa Santos, who in any case have serious reservations about what may be meant by “progress” and “amelioration”, cannot but resort to utopian thinking. Not nostalgically to dream of a better community without a place, but to envision this place of ours on its way to becoming a more balanced and more just society. In the word “utopistics”, invented by Wallerstein for “the serious assessment of [credibly better] historical alternatives” through “an exercise simultaneously in science, politics, and morality”, we might find perhaps more than what is there today in the name “utopia” (1998: 1–2). Particularly if said assessment is conceived of as an exercise in poetry as well. What Santos proposes is actually not a utopia, but rather, adapting from Foucault, a heterotopia (Santos 1995: 481). Foucault (1971: xviii) distinguishes heterotopias from utopias: while utopias “afford consolation” as they let language put things in place and allow for comforting fables, heterotopias “are disturbing” because they “undermine language” and interrupt myths of sociability. Santos elaborates on Foucault by conceiving of heterotopia as a radical displacement that upsets center and margins (or, in Santos’s terms, “North” and “South”) by disputing the abyssal line separating dominant (or colonizing) from dominated (or colonized) societies, and calling into question hegemonic, north-centric ways of knowledge production and validation. Not at all to discard them, but rather to put them in perspective, while also unburying their non-occidentalist strands. Rather than knowledge as exclusively defined by mainstream Western science, Santos calls for an intercultural ecology of knowledge (2007, 2009). Santos’s heterotopia thus implies looking carefully into the extremely unequal and unfair current conditions of our world, understand that they are the result of globalized colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy, and proceed to imagine different ways of being and knowing, by learning from those that have suffered most from the said three pillars of oppression. That is to say, learning from the direct victims of colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy. It is from this perspective—from the global South as resisting victim not only of genocide, but also of linguacide, epistemicide, and sexual oppression—that Santos conceives of a kind of epistemology that promises to open up the frontiers of knowledge production and validation. As Santos takes account of kinds of knowledge turned invisible because they are threatening to the hegemonic powers, he calls for other kinds of knowledge to help us understand how our society has the potential to become fairer. Such an endeavor required the development of what he was to name a “sociology of absences” and a “sociology of emergences,” two contrasting and complementary concepts to be understood in tandem with two other contrasting and complementary epistemological approaches: Santos’s “epistemology of blindness” and “epistemology of seeing.” Never forgetting that knowledge and ignorance are always the two sides of one and the same coin, Santos then set out to propose the concept of intercultural translation as an alternative to the abstract universalism grounding West-centric general

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theories, as well as the idea of incommensurability between cultures. It is this process of discovering and convening different kinds of knowledge for dialogue and intercultural translation that he calls “ecologies of knowledge” (Santos 2001, 2002).9 Or, rather, “ecologies of knowledges,” as he likes to say, echoing Melville’s daring resistance to an exclusivist, imperial English language in Billy Budd (Melville 1962: 131). The  theoretical framework briefly sketched above underlies a large, multinational project funded by the European Research Council currently being conducted by the sociologist. It is called “ALICE: Strange Mirrors and Unsuspected Lessons” (2011–2016), and its goal is basically to demonstrate that the understanding of the world by far exceeds the European understanding of the world.10 Even if for 5 centuries hegemonic Europe presumed to teach the world top down, not hesitating to resort to repression, imperial wars, and extreme violence to secure its interests and impose its values, it is high time, the project argues, that Europe learned from the world at large in a peaceful, truly post-imperial, postcolonial relationship. The  extremely innovative research processes of this project, involving scholars, artists, and activists from many different countries, languages, and cultures, and its ongoing accomplishments, are constantly being updated on its webpage. In  an early interview, Santos commented on the curious title he chose for his research project: “ALICE: Strange Mirrors and Unsuspected Lessons.”11 Even if not suspecting it at all, he argues, Europe, or more precisely the global North, has lessons to learn from the global South—North and South seen by him as distorted mirror reflections of each other. Santos’s major objective in this project, working with a large international team of collaborators, is to develop the analytical potential of the fundamental concepts of the epistemologies of the South, which he has been upholding at least for the last decade. I mean such concepts as the already mentioned sociology of absences, sociology of emergences, ecology of knowledges, and intercultural translation. Regardless of the final results of this pathbreaking project, Santos’s oeuvre as a whole, including both his scholarly work and his books of poetry, is in itself an eloquent illustration of such concepts. Indeed, I argue in this chapter that Santos, as a poet, already performs the epistemologies of the South that he has been long proposing as an epistemological and research program for the social sciences and the humanities. “Alice” and “Strange Mirrors” evoke, of course, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (1871). Carroll’s Alice books (Carroll 1976, 2000) can be read as suggesting the immense opportunities for varied and mutually enriching experiences you may get once stepping into strange spaces with an open mind and engaging in horizontal conversation with strange people with very different languages and ways of thinking and living. This, as we recall, was not always, or unconditionally, the case of Carroll’s Alice. There is, indeed, a subtler implication in Santos’s use of Carroll’s Alice books. Santos’s Alice is meant to be understood

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as a postcolonial Alice.12 Once considered “the most enchanting nonsense in the English language,”13 actually, Carroll’s work unwittingly speaks the sharpest sense to Europe’s colonial past (and present). Written at a time when colonies were being kept firmly in place and the Pax Britannica had made hegemonic Britain the global police force, Carroll’s Alice books provide colonial thinking of the most dangerously seductive (because hilarious) kind.14 Granted that there is a difference in tone between the two stories—Through the Looking Glass somewhat tarnishing the humor of Alice’s Adventures, as Edward Guiliano has pointed out (1982: xiv)—, Alice’s attitudes do not change much throughout. She is a young, adventurous, self-possessed, well-mannered English girl, curious about the alien, fascinating world of strange inhabitants in which she suddenly finds herself, but, for all her occasional meek openness, she is often arrogant in her sense of superiority and goes on behaving rather rudely to the local people to whom she tries to impose her English morals.15 The cultural shock Alice experiences when encountering other creatures in their own milieu, and vice versa, can be read as an ingenuous allegory of the cultural violence imposed on colonized peoples by late nineteenth century imperial Europe. The fact that it is often difficult to know who the “other” is in the Alice books, since Alice, the “natural” colonizer (as in the trial scene of Alice’s Adventures), often feels as being colonized herself (as in the train scene of Through the Looking Glass), sounds like an anticipation of Albert Memmi’s insight that “colonization creates the colonized just as  […] it creates the colonizer” (1967: 91). In Lewis Carroll, to Alice’s constant confusion and aggravation, the weird inhabitants of his land of wonder are used, abused, and harassed in all sorts of ways for the amusement of their preposterous betters; they move around flippantly as the things get used up; they scornfully order everybody else around—including Alice—and manipulate language to test her bearings. They all know, as Alice herself gradually comes to learn, that language is power, and the question is, as Humpty Dumpty puts it, who is to be master. The aim of the Project “ALICE: Strange Mirrors and Unsuspected Lessons” is to claim languages anew for a fresh understanding of our presumed postimperial, postcolonial world. A  major question behind the whole project is whether the language of the social scientific inquiry grounding the project will be enough to further the progress of the utopian steps that must not ever stay put (to go back to Vieira 2012). The most relevant Carroll passage for my musings on this Portuguese social utopist is precisely to be found in Through the Looking Glass. I mean the well-known exchange about language between Alice and Humpty Dumpty (Chapter VI): “I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’” Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’” “But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument,’” Alice objected.

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“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master— that’s all.” Humpty Dumpty’s imperious statement is my cue to conclude with poetry, poems, poets, and local habitations. The principal investigator of the ALICE project, a poet himself, knows that the rational language of the social sciences alone will not suffice to conceive of a realizable better world. Poetry must be convened as well. Poetry, I mean, in the broadest sense of the word. But what is poetry, and what can it say? Vítor Matos e Sá (1956), philosopher and poet, in the preface to one of his collections of poems: “In itself […] poetry does not say anything explicitly. What renders it poetry and not philosophy or science is to be discovered only in what it says implicitly […]. The symbolic language of poetry is […] a deforming language” (Sá 1956: 9, 13). Poetic language, in other words, aims to break with the conventional meanings of philosophy or science or common sense; it aims to interrupt the established knowledge and mores. Jacques Derrida, another philosopher, though no poet (but don’t all great philosophers aspire to be poets, et pour cause?), once tried to explain what poetry is from the viewpoint of his re-invented symbol for poetry, the simultaneously dangerous and vulnerable hedgehog: In order to respond to such a question […] you are asked to know how to renounce knowledge. And to know it well, without ever forgetting it: demobilize culture, but never forget in your learned ignorance what you sacrifice on the road, in crossing the road […you will have to] disable memory, disarm culture, know how to forget knowledge, set fire to the library of poetics […]. (Derrida, 1991: 287) The  discourses of philosophers can’t really tell what the poem is, but they clearly intimate the poem’s mysterious power to say what cannot be said in any other way. As we shall see, Derrida’s choice of an animal as the image for the language of poetry—the age-old hedgehog of Archilochus’ memorable epigram—brings Carroll’s and Santos’s poetic imagery together. The epigram itself—“The fox knows many things; the hedgehog one big thing”—can also be read as pointing to the necessary complementarity between the rational and the imaginative in scientific research, for which Santos argues in all his work. With eight volumes of poems published so far, the sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos has been resorting to lyric poetry to give a local habitation and a name to his utopian longings for social and cognitive justice. M. H. Abrams’s concept of the poem as a heterocosm, or second nature, comes to

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mind (Abrams 1971: 35, 327). As Foucauldian, disturbing heterotopias undermine language by interrupting myths of sociability, Santos’s poems emerge as “heterocosmic analogues:” from a cosmos of their own creation, as it were, they interrupt conventional sociological discourse, including his own, and discover, rather than mirror (or, as the romantics had it, they create), a different world, at the same time that they overturn the poetic canon by subverting the very notion of lyricism as subjective outburst. Thus, by objective impersonation, the poet speaks the world, rather than his individual subjectivity. This tendency became even more marked since the poet’s conception of Escrita INKZ. Anti-manifesto para uma arte incapaz, first published in Brazil in 2004, and RAP GLOBAL. Queni N. S. L. Oeste, also first published in Brazil in 2010.16 Escrita INKZ presents itself as an “anti-manifesto of incapable art” [arte incapaz— Escrita INKZ), opening, not with a “Preface” [Prefácio], but with an impertinent “Disface” [Desfácio]. A major poetic, subversive figure in Escrita INKZ is “canine wisdom,” the wisdom of the central character in the book, the dog King, borrowed, as the Desfácio explicitly reveals, from John Berger’s King. A  Street Story (Berger 1999). Like Berger, Santos resorts to King to have the dog speak for him the uncomfortable wisdom that nobody wants to hear anymore. In Berger, King’s kindness to old, destitute people stubbornly fighting for survival with dignity in some French shantytown denounces the cruel reality of hopeless homelessness, crushed by the superior interests of economic enterprising and gentrifying development. In Santos, King’s canine wisdom is the “autonomous and free voice” that exposes the absurdity of the lives that human beings unwittingly lead. The canine voice appears printed in bold on the right-hand side page of the book, contrasting with, printed in roman on the left-hand side, the bewildered voices of the humans, their “swift and short stories,” the poet explains in his Desfácio, “to leave room for the readers’ imagination.” As if in response to Berger, in one of the sections of Escrita INKZ, the wise dog King states: “Os sem abrigo são os mais humanos/Porque se parecem mais connosco” (Santos 2004: 107). The book is structured in six Andamentos (tempi)—Figura [Figure], Cidade [City] Andamento  [Tempo] Momento  [Moment] Mulher Nua  [Naked Woman], OradorNinguém  [Speaker-Nobody]—, suggesting apparently contradictory concerns, from art and music to time, eroticism, the city, and voice and identity. Attached to each one of these tempi, King adds a sample of his astute canine wisdom, which may or may not allude to it directly. “Swift and short stories” and “canine wisdom” are rather to be read transversely. Some of King’s wise maxims sum up all the canine wisdom in Escrita INCZ. As here (Santos 2004: 145): Visitantes fotográficos Equipados com brochuras e mapas Vão de vestígio em vestígio Concordando com tudo o que vêem De um ponto de vista canino

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Isto é estúpido Or here (Santos 2004: 61) Sou testemunha Noutro dia foi atropelada pelo senso comum Quase a matou Or here (Santos 2004: 187): Prova de que os humanos São um estádio intermédio Não distinguem o sentido Do seu sem-sentido Canine wisdom Canine wisdom actually sounds like a parody of the Greek chorus. Evidently, the poet didn’t think of it, otherwise he might have referred to it as a Descoro [Dischorus], perhaps with a touch of the Shakespearean fool. Throughout the book, the import of the undoing prefixes—des, anti, in—displays the poet as a provocative contrarian who challenges the reader with the absurd to make her look again and think anew, many times over. Rather like Carroll’s picture of humans as strangely viewed by animals, or his nonsensical manipulation of language to make you look at reality as paradoxically reflected on both sides of the mirror—like Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Unsuspected lessons in strange mirrors come to mind. It seems to me that what we might call the “despeaking” (desfalar) in what is quoted below from Escrita INKZ comes very close to the implications of Teedledee’s “contrariwise” stance (Santos 2004: 82–83): Uma figura desvê Dessente Dessaboreia Desouve Descheira A pouco e pouco o descorpo Cobre-se de corpo Quando os abismos dispensam os disfarces Uma figura vem para a janela À espera de ser denunciada Preocupada com os acidentes diários Uma figura toma as seguintes decisões: Dividir entre corpo e alma E nunca sair com os dois ao mesmo tempo E por inteiro Dividir o corpo em partes e a alma Em princípios E preparar combinações adequadas

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Para as diferentes ocasiões: Partes baixas com princípios vermelhos Para as intimidades curvas Partes médias com princípios convincentes-falsos Para o emprego Partes altas com princípios extremos Para discussões inúteis e decisivas Partes comestíveis e princípios em primeira versão Para os amigos The reader could engage in exegesis and point to the seemingly absurdist handling of words and concepts to denounce not only the separation of body and soul, but also the division of body and soul into “parts” and “principles” for “different occasions.” She could suggest that the six des-words at the beginning, and “descope” in particular, speak the “soul” in order ultimately to yield the “body.” She could comment on the paradoxes of the distinctions between the public and the private, the professional and the personal, the useful and the superfluous, the pleasurable and the threatening, and the noble and the mean. She could invoke the work of the social scientist and write from the point of view of the paradigmatic transition, the epistemology of blindness, the epistemology of seeing, the sociology of absences, the sociology of emergences, genocide and epistemicide, the ecology of knowledges, colonialism, capitalism and patriarchy, equality and difference, intercultural translation, and the call for a more critical, truly exacting, and more encompassing understanding of the world. Or she could highlight some memorable canine wisdom disclosing the quirkiness’s of the humans, such as “As medidas humanas/têm algo de errado de origem/Desmedem-se com frequência” (Santos 2004: 23), or “Na margem/Quem fala é falado” (Santos 2004: 131), or “Até a mijar/Pensam que são diferentes” (2004: 169), or “Deve haver um deus/Que não nos governe” (2004: 241). But she doesn’t have to. Throughout the book, the Descoro does the work for her. As here, on the senseless distinction between body and soul (Santos, 2004: 83): Não deve ser difícil de entender que o corpo É a parte da alma Que começa onde se quer Se me chama para casa Tenho de me acautelar: Há cada vez mais resíduos pessoais perigosos O que se parece Com uma resposta É sempre mais pequeno Canine wisdom

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Or here, in an apparently absurd way, making canine wisdom speak, “etymologically,” to the canon (2004: 241): O importante É ser-se especialista Do que não acontece Quando o pai nosso não está Pede para deixarem os pedidos Nas caixas das esmolas Cânone não vem de canino Se cânone é trela Como poderia ser um cão a inventá-la? Cânone deve ser uma armadilha Para apanhar humanos. Canine wisdom Let me take a cue from the “canine wisdom” of Escrita INKZ in order to offer RAP GLOBAL as the name of a very original local habitation—or a wise heterocosmos. RAP GLOBAL is a long-poem-made-of-poems-that-are-raplyrics, which literally overturns the canon by presenting it as a leash and a trap. In order to keep himself free, the poet brings democratically together—nonhierarchically and rather in promiscuous affiliation—“high” and “low” culture, and, refusing to be leashed by the canon, proceeds to question it in order to recycle it. Could it be that the concept of originality, whether in scholarship or art, must be given a second thought? The “author” of RAP GLOBAL, duly introduced by “Boaventura de Sousa Santos” at the beginning of the book, is Queni N. S. L. Oeste, a gifted Portuguese rapper of Angolan roots, whose name evokes the American rapper, Kanye West, at the same time that it makes him a man for all seasons (“Oeste,” but also “Norte,” “Sul,” and “Leste”). An important piece of information in the introduction is that the work of the distinguished Angolan poet, Manuel Rui, is crucial to understand the character and art of Queni N. S. L. Oeste. RAP GLOBAL should be read aloud, to hip hop rhythm, and with the peevish cheerfulness typical of rappers. It thus reclaims the music of the traditional lyric, even if its sounds ring quite differently. A fine example is precisely the poem’s appropriation of some of Manuel Rui’s African sounds: “a chuva ombela/vária e louca/de mil ombelas/epapwilo/okalsumila/ombela lyombela/ ocisusmo/elilimiambela” (Santos 2010: 37).17 RAP GLOBAL has been successfully set to hip hop music and is being turned into an opera. The amazing thing is the whole poem is a recycling of the canon from the viewpoint of popular works like comic books, rap songs, or TV shows. A maelstrom of magnificent, and brilliantly mocked, leftovers of the tradition. Here is the closure of the book, where the poet implicitly acknowledges that poetry is written in poetry and

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FIGURE 8.1

Poem.

in  tradition, and thus modestly, if also somewhat facetiously, yields to the true “makers” of his poem (Figure 8.1): The book is framed by two refrains whose function is to shake the poem from the page, where the new critics wanted it to be read, and throw it onto the wide world, where it demands to be read. The seven opening lines, repeated 20 times throughout the poem, show Jesus and Allah together, in a possible discreet allusion to al-Andaluz, but to an apparently inconsequent result, whether because somebody turns out to be nobody or because nothing happens (“jesus caminha/caminha com alguém/que pode ser ninguém/alah caminha/caminha com alguém/en las rambas de granada/e não acontece nada”). The other refrain, repeated 19 times, brings together six words in a much larger type than the rest of the print, in bold and italics, which defy reading, rather seeming to insist on each word’s distinct meaning: real— life—tribal—brother—improve—comedy, as if regularly reminding the reader of the poem’s major themes and purpose: reality, lived life, community, solidarity, and laughter. In other words, the poetic is an intrinsic part of life; the poetic

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is the political. As in the music of these lines: “as nações/ardem na boca/e tocam flauta/para as proteger do medo/que as protege” (Santos 2010: 43); or these: “a/ desumanidade/sempre/foi/património/da/humanidade” (Santos 2010: 79); or these: “a cidadania/é um tapete/o problema/é a maioria/andar debaixo dele” (Santos 2010: 87). In an interview he gave in Brazil when the book came out, Santos explained the creation of RAP GLOBAL as a much-needed supplement to his academic work.18 In Santos’s many scholarly works, Western modernity is critiqued for its betrayal of an exalting promise of emancipation that rapidly became a matrix of social regulation and domination. RAP GLOBAL emerges to account for what is often left out of scholarship because of academic protocol: modern creativity as riddled by madness, fanaticism, and violence; the brutality of progress and civilization and the dangerous seductiveness of order; different kinds of real people with different kinds of aspirations and different kinds of knowledge; public laws and penalties, and private passions, joys, and sorrows; brave resistance and stifled struggles; what comes after Nietzsche’s dead god; where are now the wretched of the earth; what happened to Martin Luther King’s dream; why is poetry always on the brink of non-existence; and, finally, the things we can’t even imagine because they are made to exist as absence alone, thus causing inexplicable anxiety and suffering. In order to express what is left out of his scholarly work, Santos gathered together authors, works, or characters he most admires for their utopist insights into human society. Whether they be canonical, popular, or even trashy, ranging from the Bible, Sappho, Camões, Shakespeare, Goethe, Whitman, Mallarmé, Pessoa, or Marjane Satrapi to Astonishing X-Men, Eminem, Wolverine, Hulk, Mutant Town, Dead Prez, Daredevil, Joann Sfar, or Talib Kweli, Santos makes them all rap away horizontally and inter-exchangeably. With its complex, often cryptic intertextuality, its clever language games, and its insistent appeal to translators, RAP GLOBAL is also a poetic exercise in intercultural translation. Just a few examples. The poet writes “hall of fame/hall of shame/hall the same” and immediately calls for “tradutores-skid-row/por favor” (Santos 2010: 10); quotes a few lines by Nicolás Guillen (“la sangre es um mar imenso...), without mentioning the poet’s name, and asks for “tradutores-cubanos-descalços/por favor” (Santos 2010: 11); writes “the trees of the mind are black” and adds “tradutores sylvianos por favor,” lest the reader failed to recognize Syvia Plath’s line (Santos 2010: 18); summons “tradutores-suicidas please” for Plath’s famous boast about her talent to die “exceptionally well” (Santos 2010: 58); quotes two Latin expressions and demands “tradutores-sem-memória/por favor,” adding, for the reader’s better understanding of “homo semper tiro” (a favorite of a much admired Ernst Bloch), “é sempre começo/e por isso tropeça/e não começa” (Santos 2010: 22); refers to “untermensch” and comically pleads for “tradutores-toupeiras/por favor” (Santos 2010: 29–30); quotes “ireland is the old sow/that eats her farrow” and asks for “tradutores apátridas/por favor” to identify Joyce’s disappointment

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in his country through Stephen Dedalus (Santos, 2010: 43); when Dante’s complaint against the limitations of language in the Divine Comedy is quoted, RAP GLOBAL calls deridingly for “tradutores-de-óbvios-pedantes/por favor” (Santos 2010: 51); and when, toward the end of the poem, Heidegger’s “Dasein” is absurdly shown to be on its scaffold, there is some sense in invoking “tradutores-de-argamassa/por favor” (Santos 2010: 90). The poet also engages in some translating of his own, winking at Carroll’s manipulation of language, as when he turns Obama’s “yes we can” into “yes we canned” and Dominican (monks) into “domini canes” (the lord’s dogs—“a farejar heresia”) (Santos 2010: 31) or Macbeth’s tale full of sound and fury into a “tail” (Santos 2010: 89), echoing the mouse’s long and sad tale/tail in Alice in Wonderland. As already noted, the sociologist maintains that modern Western science is not  to be discarded, but rather critically embraced by the epistemologies of the South and put productively in dialogue with other ways of knowledge production and validation. The poet thinks similarly about the Western poetic tradition: it must be put in its broadest context and demystified. On page 47, for example, RAP GOBAL brings together an African folktale, Celan’s troubled encounter with Hölderlin, Rimbaud’s othering of himself, Pessoa’s scatologic lucidity, and Ashbery’s memorable fart in Flow Chart: quando um grande senhor passa o camponês curva-se em reverência e em silêncio/peida-se […] sabes bem que peido é peido mas só o do ashbery dá direito a lápide excuse me while I fart there that’s better I actually feel relieved pallaksch pallaksch porra hölderlin ou celan um dos dois está doido merda sejam lúcidos caguem pro mundo mas não se caguem ao menos je est un autre. Later on in the poem, the rapper-speaker persona is angry at the persistence of the canon: “por quanto tempo/vais chorar por aí/encostado/ao poema velho/do mestre fausto/à proa doida/do velho ulisses” (Santos 2010: 63). Further down, Eminem is summoned to pair off with Gertrude Stein in a

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hilarious reconsideration of repetition as a poetic device (Santos 2010: 77–78). Now  and then, celebrated phrases of the tradition are travestied with zest: Rimbaud’s “il faut être absolument moderne” becomes “il faut être absolument trans-moderne;” and Mallarmé’s “la destruction fut ma Béatrice” becomes “la destruction fut ma beatralha.” In the latter case, not without sense, “tradutorescomunas por favor” are requested (Santos 2010: 82). The poem is mostly written in the vocative mode. Right at the beginning, the poetic voice emphatically addresses a friend or comrade (“companheiro companheiro”) with recommendations on how to survive in a world full of dangers and traps of all sorts. Sometimes, this friend, who is also the speaker himself, becomes one of his characters. In these opening movements, the friend is the one who once said: “I have a dream;” the speaker of the memorable phrase (Martin Luther King, Jr.) is then insolently advised not to snore lest the police should hear (Santos 2010: 9–10). The vocative mode continues throughout with all kinds of advice. The reader gradually understands that she is also expected to be that friend. The preposterous and aggressive, if not insulting, recommendations, drenched in irony, are a challenge to whoever is listening to resist hypocritical conformity with the status quo, whether regarding political authority, educational structures, social mores, or, last but not least, the literary canon itself. Just consider the extraordinary passage about revolt, a dog, the dog’s shit, the leash, Blake’s wisdom turned upside down, and Blake’s great Portuguese translator, Paulo Quintela (Santos 2010: 72): revolta-te contra os jardins põe o cão a carregar o saco dos cagalhões não te humilhes porra não és catador de merda the road of wisdom leads to the palace of excess e vice-versa e vice vice-versa e vice vice vice e vice vice-versa diz ao blake quintela que não precisas de trela As the poem reaches its closure, the speaker/author is clearly more than ever addressing himself. Having invoked so many writers or intellectual freedom fighters throughout, such as the Bengali Rabindranath Tagore (Santos 2010: 59–60) or the Angolan Uanhenga Xitu, the writer and nationalist by his official name Agostinho André Mendes de Carvalho (Santos 2010: 59), he chooses now to summon one of the most original writers of the Portuguese language

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and a great impersonator of identities, poetical, national, and ethnic, the painter, poet, and humorous parodist, of many names and accomplishments, António Quadros, born in Portugal, but for many years feeling and claiming to be a native of Mozambique. Under the name of João Pedro Grabato Dias, he wrote some distinguished poetry, though for long denying he was its author; as Frey Joannes Garabatus, he produced As Quybyrykas, a remarkable parody of the Portuguese national epic of imperial expansion, Camões’ Os Lusíadas. After the Portuguese Revolution of 25 April 1974 and the independence of Mozambique the following year, he published, under the name of Mutimati Barnabé João, a book of poems entitled Eu, o povo (1975), a collection of poems extremely critical of colonialism, but also of some of the shapes revolution, independence, and consolidation of freedom have taken ( João 2008). No wonder Queni N. S. L. Oeste/Boaventura de Sousa Santos chooses to close his multicultural poem with an homage to the multifaceted, binational, and would-be biracial artist (Santos 2010: 91–94): vai embora leva o mapa das perdições […] mas se encontrares o mutimati confia nele […] reboca a verga reboca a boca a original a louca a de mutimati barnabé joão grande mutimati se portugância e moçambicância fossem países tu serias herói desnacional To conclude: the major goal of this sociologist’s work is clearly to contribute to making our world equitably habitable by all. For such a task, sociology, even if an exercise simultaneously in science, politics, and morality, is not enough. His utopian thinking needs to resort to poetry, the only way to give a local habitation and a name to his sociological imaginings. The many aspects of the project “ALICE: Strange Mirrors and Unsuspected Lessons”, of which his poetry I discuss here

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cannot but be considered an integral part, are witness to the utopian, multilayered commitments and efforts of his principal investigator. His major objective is to retrieve the words to say life, freedom, and justice for all. As in the following lines of Tagore quoted in RAP GLOBAL (Santos 2010: 59–60): today i imagine the words of countless languages to be suddenly fetterless Such is the goal of the ALICE project as it exercises the epistemologies of the South. Indeed, as I have tried to suggest in this chapter, the epistemologies-ofthe-South proposal implies a large transformation of the social sciences and the humanities: it allows for the construction of ecologies of knowledge involving different languages and ways of narrating the world, be it science, poetry, or art, while keeping their identities intact. That the proposal’s author has been successfully performing it while going far beyond his well-established identity as a sociologist, which entitles him to conduct the ALICE project, cannot but speak for the proposal’s credibility. DON’T SHOOT THE UTOPIST!

Notes 1 Edition used: More (1964). 2 More’s Utopia is not mentioned in Sir Thomas More, the never performed play at which Shakespeare is supposed to have had a hand too (Howard-Hill 1989). 3 More’s second letter to Peter Giles was included only in the Paris edition of 1517 (McCutcheon 1983: 55–58). 4 Thomas More to Peter Giles, ‘Greetings’ (More 1964: 6). Peter Giles, in a letter to Jerome Busleydon, gives the ‘cough’ explanation (Aretoulakis 2014: 96). 5 See Plato’s Cratylus for the exchange on language between Socrates, Hermogenes, and Cratylus. 6 Edition used: Butler (1934). 7 When not otherwise noted, all translations are my own. 8 See www.youtube.com/watch?v=OViEBnkJQAc, accessed in August 2016. 9 See also Chapters  6 through 8 of Epistemologies of the South (Santos 2014), for an updated version of Santos’s ideas. 10 Information available at http://alice.ces.uc.pt/en. 11 See http://alice.ces.uc.pt/en/index.php/about/?lang=en. 12 As early as 1994, Santos gave a collection of his essays the suggestive title of Pela mão de Alice: O social e o político na pós-modernidade (Santos 1994). Postmodernity includes, of course, postcolonialism. 13 See Woollcott’s Introduction to Carroll (1976: 5). 14 I first read the Alice books from this perspective in Ramalho (2013) and Ramalho Santos (2014). I have since come across Jon Stratton’s analysis of the colonial context of Alice’s Adventures and Through the Looking Glass (Stratton 1990: 168–174). See also Stratton (2000). Charles Taliaferro and Elizabeth Olson do mention, in passing, that ‘Carroll was at work during a time of imperial power and conflict’ and that he wrote ‘his work at the most prestigious and powerful university in the English-speaking world at the height of the British Empire’ (Taliaferro and Olson 2010: 186).

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15 For a different, feminist reading of Alice-the-character, see Lloyd (2010: 7–18). 16 I have already dealt with Escrita INKZ and RAP GLOBAL at some length in ‘Discourses of Resistance’ (Ramalho Santos 2015). 17 Cf. Rui (2007: passim). 18 Miguel Conde, interview with Boaventura de Sousa Santos, O Globo, edition of 24 July 2010.

References Abrams, Meyer Howard (1971), The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press. Aretoulakis, Emmanouil (2014), “The  prefatory/postscript letters to St. Thomas More’s Utopia. The culture of ‘seeing’ as a reality-conferring strategy”, Journal of Early Modern Studies, 3, 91–113. doi:10.13128/JEMS-2279-7149-14166. Berger, John (1999), King: A Street Story. London: Bloomsbury. Butler, Samuel (1934), Erewhon, or Over the Range. London: Jonathan Cape. Carroll, Lewis (1976), The Complete Works. Introduction by Alexander Woollcott. New York: Vintage Books. Carroll, Lewis (2000), The  Annotated Alice: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland  & Through the Looking Glass. New York: Norton. Edited by Martin Gardner. Derrida, Jacques (1991), “Che cos’è la poesia?” in Peggy Kamuf (ed.), A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds. New York: Columbia University Press, 288–299. Foucault, Michel (1971), The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Pantheon Books. Guiliano, Edward (1982), “Introduction”, in Lewis Carroll (ed.), The  Complete Illustrated Works of Lewis Carroll. New York: Avenel Books. Howard-Hill, Tevor (ed.) (1989), Shakespeare and Sir Thomas More: Essays on the Play and Its Shakespearian Interest. New York: Cambridge University Press. Jameson, Fredric (2005), Archeologies of the Future:The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. London:Verso. João, Mutimati Barnabé (2008), Eu, o povo. Lisboa: Cotovia. Lloyd, Megan S. (2010), “Unruly Alice: A feminist view of some adventures in wonderland,” in Richard Brian Davis (ed.), Alice in Wonderland and Philosophy: Curiouser and Curiouser. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 7–18. McCutcheon, Elizabeth (1983), My Dear Peter: The ‘ars poetica’ and hermeneutics for More’s Utopia. Angers: Moreanum. Melville, Herman (1962  [1924]), Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Edited by Harrison Hayford and Merton M. Sealts, Jr. Memmi, Albert (1967), The Colonizer and the Colonized. Boston: Beacon Press. More,Thomas (1964 [1515–1516]), Utopia. New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press. Edited by S. J. Edward Surtz. Pimenta, Alberto (1995), A magia que tira os pecados do mundo. Lisboa: Cotovia. Ramalho Santos, Maria Irene (2014), “Gender, species, and coloniality in Maria Velho da Costa”, in Anna Klobucka and Owen Hilary (eds.), Gender, Empire and Postcolony. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 191–202. Ramalho Santos, Maria Irene (2015), “Discursos de resistência”, Conferência Plenária do II Simposio EDiSo (Associação de Estudos Sobre Discurso e Sociedad), Available at http:// edisoportal.org/simposium2015/informa%C3%A7%C3%B5es-anteriores/1221discursos-de-resist%C3%AAncia-irene-ramalho-santos (accessed June 2015).

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Ramalho, Maria Irene (2013), “A violência da cultura: Sexo, espécie e colonialidade em Maria Velho da Costa”, in António Sousa Ribeiro (ed.), Representações da violência. Coimbra: Almedina, 51–63. Rui, Manuel (2007), Ombela. Luanda: União dos Escritores Angolanos. Sá, Vítor Matos e (1956), “O que pode dizer a poesia?” O silêncio e o tempo. Coimbra: Coimbra Editora, 9–16. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (1994), Pela mão de Alice: O social e o político na pós-modernidade. Porto: Afrontamento. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (1995), “Don’t shoot the utopist”, in Toward a New Common Sense: Law, Science and Politics in the Paradigmatic Transition. New  York: Routledge, 479–519. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (1998), “The fall of the Angelus Novus: Beyond the modern game of roots and options”, Current Sociology, 46(2), 81–118. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2001), “Toward an epistemology of blindness: Why the new forms of ‘ceremonial adequacy’ neither regulate nor emancipate”, European Journal of Social Theory, 4(3), 251–279. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2002), “Para uma sociologia das ausências e uma sociologia das emergências”, Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais, 63, 237–280. doi:10.4000/ rccs.1285. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2004), Escrita INKZ: Anti-manifesto para uma arte incapaz. Rio de Janeiro: Aeroplano. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2007), “Beyond abyssal thinking: From global lines to ecologies of knowledge”, Review, 30(1), 45–89. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2009), “A  non-occidentalist West? Learned ignorance and ecology of knowledge”, Theory, Culture  & Society, 26(7–8), 103–125. doi:10.1177/0263276409348079. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2010), RAP GLOBAL: Queni N. S. L. Oeste. Rio de Janeiro: Aeroplano. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2014), Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Shakespeare, William (1960), The  Complete Works. London: Collins. Edited by Peter Alexander. Stratton, Jon (1990), Writing Sites:A Genealogy of the Postmodern World.Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Stratton, Jon (2000), “The  beast of the Apocalypse: The  postcolonial experience of the United States”, in C. Richard King (ed.), Postcolonial America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 21–64. Taliaferro, Charles, and Olson, Elizabeth (2010), “Serious nonsense”, in Richard Brian Davis (ed.), Alice in Wonderland and Philosophy: Curiouser and Curiouser. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley & Sons, 183–196. Vieira, Fátima (2012), “Falar de utopia em tempos de crise”, Via Panorâmica, número especial, 5–9. Available at http://ler.letras.up.pt/uploads/ficheiros/11659.pdf (accessed November 2015). Wallerstein, Immanuel (1998), Utopistics: Or Historical Choices of the Twenty-first Century. New York: The New Press. Zamska, Sue (2002), “Erewhon and the end of utopian humanism”, ELH, 69(2), 439–472.

9 FOOD AS A METAPHOR FOR CULTURAL HIERARCHIES* Gopal Guru

Introduction Cooked food is a derivative of food grains, but is different from the latter in a fundamental way. It is different in as much as it deals more with meaningful survival and not  just mere survival. It  is the cooked food that becomes the major source of multiple reading; material, moral, metaphysical, social, cultural, political, etc. Cooked food is the potential source of humiliation, if not the violation of human rights. As I will argue in this chapter, cooked food generates cultural hierarchies both across and within the social groups, which then can lead to the conditions of humiliation. Food hierarchies and resultant subjective attitudes form the basic concern in this particular work. Before I elaborate, it is important that I throw some light on the other dimension of cooked food. There are several ways that have been followed, by both philosophical minds as well as folklorist minds, to use cooked food as a powerful metaphor for reaching out to the common masses. Thus, the Buddha used mustard seeds to bring out the light of universal truth within emotionally driven persons. It has been argued by some scholars that Plato used food as a constraint for the philosophical mind. That is to say, bothering for food too much is not the concern of the soul or the philosophers. But, at the same time, they can feed on the food produced by the slaves and cooked by women (Curtin and Heldke 1992). * This article acquired strength and shape in the context of the discussion that I was fortunate enough to hold with E. Sridharan, Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI), in Philadelphia. I also take this opportunity to thank Juliana Di Giustini and Alan Atchison from CASI for commenting on earlier drafts and providing necessary support in the completion of this text in 2009.

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In more recent times, political leaders use cooked food as a metaphor to underscore and subsequently communicate the more serious normative meaning to common people. Let me illustrate with a few examples to elaborate on this dimension of cooked food. Since I am more familiar with the “Maharashtrian” food culture, I, for the sake of convenience, will use Bhakari (millet bread), which has been used by some of the prominent personalities belonging to a different universe of imagination. They chose Bhakari as the metaphor because it forms an important part of the daily staple food of the toiling masses in Maharashtra. Thus, Bhakari, as is believed by these personalities, can serve as a powerful metaphor to communicate rather effectively the difficult, philosophically loaded meaning. Among those who have used this metaphor is Mr. Sharad Pawar, a prominent political leader from Maharashtra. In  the context of the set-back that his party has received in the recently held Lok Sabha Elections, he used the metaphor of Bhakari to explain to his party workers the importance of rotation as a justice principle. He said, “Jar ka Bhaakri firwali nahi tar thi karapte”1 (if one fails to reverse the side of millet bread on the frying pan, it gets overcooked—karapte—or, literally, corrupted). He used the metaphor of Bhakari only to convey that it is important to rotate the candidates through genuine distribution of tickets for the election. Pawar is trying to concretize the social meaning of Bhakari by starting from the concrete experience of Bhakari, which becomes a possibility only in the actual possession of Bhakari on the frying pan (Tawa). On the other hand, Narayan Surve, a revolutionary poet from Maharashtra, has also used the metaphor of Moon for Bhakari.Thus, he starts from the abstract to the concrete, from the utopian to the real. This metaphor, unlike the one used by Pawar, does not work in the context of justice, but in the context of equality. Surve’s very famous poem, Ardhy Bhakaricha Chandar (half-moon is like half Bhakari), entails a contradictory meaning (Surve 1987). On the one hand, it suggests getting half a portion of Bhakari gives a perennially half; for a starving person the joy is as if this person has got the moon itself. On the other hand, this metaphor of moon for Bhakari could also be read for drawing the opposite meaning, that even getting half a Bhakari is as difficult as catching the half-moon in the sky. It is because of this impossibility of getting a Bhakari that Surve begins from moon and not Bhakari as a concrete substance, for it is not an everyday possibility in the life of the poor. One can further read into his metaphor and argue that at least one can see the moon every day, but one may not be able to see even a half or a quarter Bhakari. Thus, in Surve’s poem, there is a different order of aesthetic that is involved. It is more about the imagined or abstract moon, while Pawar’s aesthetic emerges from the concrete, the Bhakari. Aesthetic in Pawar’s metaphor of Bhakari reflects the beauty of Bhakari, which is built up around a proper round shape, an attractive size, and a faint golden color. I am sure that poets from other cultural experiences must use their food items as metaphors to convey different meanings that have bearing on the existential conditions of the toiling, hungry millions.

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Yet, in another context, some of the leading poets from different parts of India have used “poison bread” as the metaphor for Jhootan, “rotten” Bhakari (Dangle 1983). The Dalit poets have used Jhootan as a metaphor so as to create a sense of self-respect against Jhootan, which epitomizes the state of servility (Valmiki 1996). At  the more abstract level, some of the creative minds used Jhootan in order to explain Marxian dialectics. Jhootan is normally a “rotten” more fermented food; if eaten it can gradually put one to sleep. The  more Jhootan one eats, the sleepier one begins to feel. Thus, Jhootan suggests the change from quantitative to qualitative. Finally, let me offer an interesting kind of metaphor used by none other than Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar. Ambedkar has used another non-Dalit specific, but more general food item puran poli6 (paratha stuffed with sweet paste in the middle) as the metaphor to capture the dynamics of history and radical change. Dr. Ambedkar has used puran poli (Kambel 1996) as the metaphor in order to describe the historical importance or the sequences of two major revolutions: the French and the Russian Revolutions. The French Revolution for him was like the outer layer of the folded poli; the Russian Revolution was like the puran, which is stuffed in the folded poli. Puran (sweet paste) is the core, which defines the puran poli, but these two ingredients are equally important to make a complete sense of poli. One is incomplete without the other. However, within the Dalit cultural universe, one finds differential uses of metaphors that are related to food. The  difference has to be understood in terms of the ontological shift within the Dalit community itself. Those who have been able to achieve some material success and stabilized their food recipe could become part of the cultural aspiration of the upper caste/upper class and would use the metaphor according to their new cultural taste. And those who have not been “fortunate” enough to change their material condition would naturally use the metaphor which is closer to their existential condition. Let me explain this ontological differentiation, which becomes discernible in the differential Dalit perception of Ambedkar’s philosophy. In Dalit middle class families, sweet items have become stabilized in their everyday meals. The  middle class Dalit literary imagination uses sweets as a metaphor to access Ambedkar’s philosophy. Thus, sweets, for whatever reasons, occupy their cultural imagination. This domination of sweet percolates from cultural to intellectual. This is clear from the following Marathi dictum that a middle class Dalit is often seen using: “Baba Sahebanchi wani, Jusi Barphi Pedhywani.”2 The philosophy of Ambedkar is like sweets. This metaphor seeks to detect the social location of a Dalit, and it also accurately summarizes his aspiration for accommodation into the pacificatory structures. Sweet is both pacificatory as well as neutralizing. One uses sweet in order to neutralize the impact created by the hot chili. The  metaphor of sweet, it could be argued, denies Ambedkar’s philosophy as a subversive character. But not so the ones especially deployed by the common Dalits. Let us look at the subaltern Dalits

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and the metaphor that they use. They say, “Baba sahebanchi wani jashi Bhakari Chatani wani,”3 meaning the philosophy of Ambedkar is like Bhakari (bread) and Chatani (green chili paste) and hence is subversive like hot chili. This particular subaltern perception involving hot spice chili paste as the powerful metaphor in turn suggests two important things. First, it makes Ambedkar’s philosophy as subversive as chili; Chatani as a metaphor symbolically suggests an oppositional imagination and the subaltern Dalits see this imagination reflected in the philosophy of Ambedkar. Second, the metaphor of Chatani also underlines the internal differentiation within the Dalit community in terms of both cultural and intellectual tastes. The Dalit middle class uses food as a metaphor for harmony, while the subaltern Dalit uses the metaphor that suggests subversion. The metaphor of sweet as used by the middle class Dalit may not have been worn out, but seems to be devoid of subversive power. Paradoxically, it is not chili that determines the notion of taste; on the contrary, it is the sweet that defines the notion of taste. Taste, I will argue in the following sections, can be defined in terms of the idea of difference and not sameness.

What Is Taste? Defining taste is not an easy task, for taste is used in a very generic sense of the term. Hence, I would try to define it particularly in terms of the specific contradictory relationship between the tongue and the skin. It is the tongue that plays a crucial role in defining the taste of a particular cooked food. There also may be a secondary contradiction between the tongue and the stomach. Food is approved or allowed by the tongue, and, in turn, the tongue rejects whatever is allowed by an upset stomach. Hot chili, particularly chili powder or smashed green chilies, if applied topically on any part of the body, is bound to produce the universal impact of a burning sensation all over the body and not just on the tongue. It is the skin that provides the tasting conditions for a food prepared with green or red chilies; it is the skin that produces a similar experience while the tongue produces difference in taste. To put it differently, the tongue decides the range of taste, while the skin maps out the length of taste. The  tongue can determine what is sour, salty, sweet, and bitter; the tongue and not  the skin plays an important role in classifying food. It has a legislative power, so to speak. Thus, sweet tastes can be defined singularly by the tongue. If one applies a sweet substance to any other part of the body it would not produce any impact, as the chili does. Thus, for those who eat something sweet, it would be the chili that would decide the taste, and for those who use the chili as a staple food, it is the sweet that would decide the taste. In the Indian context, the chili forms the basic ingredient in the daily meals of the toiling masses (if they are fortunate to eat regularly). Sweet items make only a guest appearance in the daily meals of these poor masses. These masses prepare sweet food only on the special occasions, i.e., some important festivals.

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Salt and onion are the other two ingredients that accompany chili in the daily meals of the poor, but it is not the chili or the spices that define the taste, even for the poor (these are poor Other Backward Caste4 peasants and the laboring masses). Ironically, in the perception of the toiling millions, it is the sweet that defines the taste. This is clear from their own admission of evaluation of the spicy recipe that they use in cooking food. When someone poor asks another poor person about what a preparation tastes like, they invariably answer, for example, in Marathi, “lai god zala” (it has become quite nice by sweet). Mind you! This  is the hot spicy cooked food. One would have expected them to name it as “Lai Khamang” or “Zanzanit zala” (it has become really hot and spicy). However, it is the element of deprivation that has bearing on the idea of taste as far as the poor toiling masses are concerned. This has been the perception of even the tribal communities. For example, in one of the important Marathi movies, “Jait Re Jait,” a Brahmin priest asks the tribal group not  to eat rat as it is the carrier of Lord Ganesha. The tribal hero in the movie does not initially agree with this proposal and says the taste of a rat is simply superb, it is very sweet (Undir lai goad lagato). Thus sweet flavors have a hegemonic presence in the cultural practices of the poor. In addition to sweet, which serves as the major criterion for deciding the taste, there are two additional factors that have bearing on the definition of taste. These are fresh cooked food and not Jhootan. For obvious reasons, leftover or rotten food cannot provide a defining criterion for taste. Since the taste carries some kind of authenticity with itself, it can be concretely realized or enjoyed only through eating food which is cooked fresh. Dalit families which had hold over watan (feudal rights given to Dalits by the local political power) hardly ever cooked fresh food at home. From here one can then argue that the Dalits started defining taste only after they stopped eating rotten food and the flesh of dead cattle and began cooking fresh meals. Why did they stop eating the meat of dead cattle? It was because consuming this food folded them into what could be called a “Savage Identity.” Let me explain this further by citing the debate that took place between the scholars from the Mahar community and the scholars from the Brahmins caste of Maharashtra. I will begin with the assertion that food, particularly cooked food, is related not simply to taste and hunger, but, more importantly, it provides a decisive criterion for the construction of a cultural identity. In  other words, cooked food or food practices provide cultural criteria in assigning cultural identity to a certain social section in the society. Thus, in the common perception of the subaltern, particularly the Dalits, preparation of sweets of a different form, like Shreekhand, Puri, and Deshi Ghee, came to be exclusively associated with the Brahmins, particularly during the Peshwa period in nineteenth century Maharashtra.5 This is not to suggest that the upper castes are completely averse to eating non-vegetarian. As is well known, the Kashmiri Pandits have recipes for cooking goat meat in so many different ways, and the Bengali Bhadraloke 6

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eat fish, which is called sea vegetarian food. However, these food habits are an affirmation of cultural identity. This is because these are followed by the people from the lower caste. This imitation of the recipes and the food-related cultural practices of one’s social superiors is called “sanskritization,” a concept coined by M.N. Srinivas (1952), one of the leading social anthropologists from India. The upper castes have not only prescribed food for themselves, they have designated foods for other castes as well. For example, in Manu’s ritual strictures, Jhootan and the meat of dead cattle were prescribed to the Untouchables as their staple foods.13 The question that needs to be answered is why did the Untouchables eat the meat of dead cattle? Also, how did the other castes survive during the acute famine situation? Did they not eat dead cattle? The distribution of livelihood resources that came to be strictly organized around the watertight compartmentalization of India into caste groups pushed Untouchables completely outside the domain of distribution. The Untouchables were at the receiving end of the discarded resources; the Jhootan, cast off cloth, and dead cattle. The irony is that the Untouchables produced food grain, but were denied the legitimate share of it. They got only the inferior part of this product (coarse grain, grain gleaned out of cow dung, Jhootan, and cast off clothes). However, during difficult times, the Untouchables were forced to depend on whatever resources were available to them, and the meat of dead cattle was easily available to them even in tough times. They dried the meat and stored it in their little shanty huts; during the rainy season, they dried the meat by loading it on a rope which extended from one end of a Dalit hut or house to the other. This was called Chanyanche Toran in the Dalit vocabulary. The practice of drying meat during the rainy season often put the members of Untouchable households in grave risk because the meat drew snakes and sometimes even tigers from a nearby jungle into the house. The meat of dead cattle not only helped Untouchables survive during difficult times, but it was also used by some Mahar families to arrange preference in the matrimonial relations within the Untouchable’s community. Today it would be quite astonishing to acknowledge that, even as recently as 70 years ago, the Mahars from Maharashtra used the meat of dead cattle as the active consideration for marrying a girl into a household that held a greater share (Kamble 2008). In the Mahar caste, parents would consider it to be a fortune and a privilege to marry their daughter into a Mahar family with a greater share of such meat. Thus, the meat of dead cattle has a moral significance for Untouchables. But the Untouchable in Maharashtra did not  stick to this resource just because it had moral significance. In  the cultural history of Dalits in Maharashtra, the meat of dead cattle served as the “dowry” within the Dalit household. However, the Mahars lost this source of dowry as they gave up eating the meat of dead cattle. They, however, do not have regret for this loss. Led by Bhimrao Ambedkar, they discovered a morally higher value in giving it up in favor of dignity and self-respect.

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Their food pattern underwent a radical shift, moving from Murdada (meat abstracted from dead cattle) through Hatfatka (meat acquired through hunting) to Toliv (the meat of a slaughtered animal). Most of the Dalits in India eat beef. Even if they have given up eating the meat of dead cattle, their cultural identity seems to be permanently attached to this food. Some of the leading thinkers and the leaders of modern Maharashtra trace the genealogy of Mahar identity to the meat of dead cattle. I would like to argue in the following pages that cooked food is not politically neutral. On the contrary, it has a very strong political undertone. Politics built around the notion of food necessarily operates within the double configuration of power, local and national. Certain attempts to associate one social group—in the present case, the Mahars of Maharashtra—with the meat of dead cattle are influenced by the need to retain the hegemonic claim over regionalism as well as nationalism.This claim is necessarily mediated through invocation of association of a certain caste with certain kinds of food. Claims of broader cultural identity through this mediation are maintained for sustaining the totality of social dominance by perpetuating hierarchies through this cultural prescription. Let me offer an illustration from Maharashtra. One set of scholars used food as the marker of the socio-cultural identity of a particular group. These scholars argued that the Mahars became Mahars because they were Mrutahari (those who eat dead animals—see Joshi 1972: 190). For example, some scholars constructed the cultural identity of the Maharas just because they ate meat of dead cattle. This, in effect, assigned an ascending sense of contempt and repulsion for the Mahars (Joshi 1972; Kharat 1987). In addition to this, the upper caste perception also traces the Mahar identity to their food eating habits. Thus, according to this understanding, Mahars are those who are Maha-ahari, meaning those who are mighty eaters (Joshi 1972). By implication, sweet connotes an ascending sense of social superiority to the sweet consumer who is by and large the top of the twice-born7 in India. As it has been argued by scholars from the Mahar caste, “this particular interpretation of food which sought to construct Mahar into what could be called a “Savage Identity” was provided by the upper caste scholars with the intention to counter the more positive construction of Mahar Identity” (Kharat 1987). According to some of the leading Non-Brahmin thinkers, such as Jotirao Phule and V.R. Shinde, the Mahars were not Mrut-Aahari (as Brahminical scholarship would like to see it), but Maha-ari (the great enemy). However, using food for freezing some social sections into a cultural box is not specific to Maharashtra. In fact, non-vegetarian food is also used by the upper caste from other parts of the country to construct the “Savage Identity.” Thus, in parts of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, a section of the so-called Untouchables is called Musahari (the rat eaters).8 As against this Dalit food culture, Shreekhand (sweet from Maharashtra) and other kinds of vegetarian food practices automatically confer on the upper caste a civilized identity as vegetarians, who are by and large non-Dalits.9 In addition to this, the sweet is also projected as representing the total food culture of not only a region, but entire country.

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That is to say, attempts have been made to associate vegetarianism with nationalism.10 For example, one often comes across people projecting vegetarian food (mostly sweet like Shreekhand) as the only food practice representing the whole of Maharashtra.11 They not only use Shreekhand to maintain the caste or status hierarchy, but this sweet is also available to them for humiliating those who do not have the experience of tasting it. In such situations, they are quite vulnerable to humiliation. Shreekhand is the source of humiliation because, in terms of its color and thin substance, it has a deceptive capacity to resemble Pithala (a paste made out of the gram flower and cooked in a much diluted form). A person who is unable to make out the difference between Shreekhand and Pithala is likely to become an object of ridicule. This happens in the collective feast where those who are not familiar with Shreekhand can often face humiliation.12 However, the subaltern Dalits contest this universalist claim of vegetarian food and seek to undercut its significance by reaffirming their food as an alternative culture of the region. This contestation happens within the local configuration of cultural power. Within the local configuration of power, this homogenous notion of Indian Thali,13 which is defined in terms of its elaborate nature, with sweet dominating it, came to be deeply contested particularly by the Dalits. Dalits use nonvegetarian food as a potent source to counter the nationalist construction of Indian Thali. Let us see how the Dalits have used non-vegetarian food, particularly beef, as a powerful cultural medium to undercut the culturally superior status of the upper castes, which seek to chain the Dalits to a “Savage Identity.” This cultural contestation has been very much present in the cultural politics of the Dalits in Maharashtra. This contestation is articulated through the folk literature of Dalits from this region. Here is an example of a folk song, sung mostly by Dalit women: Pati bhar Laddu Kai kamache, wati bhar pahije Matan,” ani wati bhar matana sathi zurate man na ho; Bajar chya divashi matan nasel tar kasa divas legato Bhanbhan” An wati bhar matana sathi zurate man na ho.14 This folk song suggests a cultural scenario involving a sharp divide between two contrasting notions of food. In one sense, a Dalit woman is claiming the superiority of non-vegetarian food (beef ) over the vegetarian food (sweet laddoos) that is generally associated with upper caste food practices in the majority of India. This affirmation of beef over sweets became significant when the upper caste used beef to push the Dalit beyond the pale of “civilized society.” A Dalit woman, in her attempt to weigh beef higher than sweets, asserts that a basket full of laddoos cannot be a cultural substitute for even a quarter plate of beef. It is within the same framework that Dalits are seeking to politicize their own food practices as superior to the food practices of the twice-born. They try

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to re-signify what is downgraded or looked down upon as filthy. Within the range of the cultural tastes of Dalits, even goat meat is considered inferior to beef. In the Dalit aesthetic, both goat meat and chicken meat are rather bland and lack real authentic tastes. They, unlike the Western perception (Curtin 1992: 13), do not associate red meat with masculinity, as it is consumed by both males and females from the Dalit community. Of course, within the Dalit community, the pattern of consumption tilts more in favor of a male than a female. In the Dalit community, apart from the fact that it is cheap, the preference for beef is also to be understood not in terms of developing a consuming body but, more importantly, feeding the earning body. Second, Dalits also make this judgment in favor of beef because it has a rough and tough texture and the fiber that other varieties of meat lack. Even for Dalits, eating red meat involves the consideration of nutrition. Interestingly, beef is also available to those who are interested in reversing the social hierarchy by using beef as a criterion for social transformation. In India, some interested social activists have used beef as the standard by which to measure the radicalism of a person. To put it simply, in the perception of such social activists, beef eating serves an important criterion for proving one’s social radicalism. Such attempts and thinking do have a symbolic significance, particularly in the following context. Beef eating acquires significance in the religious context which has been central in the public life of India. In  such a context, beef eating has been considered a social taboo, particularly after the Brahmins stopped eating beef. In politics, when the Hindutva suggest that Dalits should not eat beef, it also assumes importance. This appeal against eating beef was visible in the campaign that was carried out by the Arya Samaj. Hindu Mahasabha, Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya tried to teach Dalits that they should not eat beef. Thus, beef eating has come to be associated with a kind of politics which may not be sufficiently convincing as far as total Dalit emancipation is concerned. When beef eating married with politics, it is worked out as the standard of maintaining social hierarchy even among the sub-castes of Dalits,15 then pushing beef into the service of radicalism is justifiable. And yet it could not be termed as the sufficient condition for evaluating someone’s radicalism. This is because these efforts or intentions, howsoever laudable, look like an oversimplified method of converting someone from being conservative to radical. One cannot conclude that beef eating is a sufficient condition for being progressive and radical. If that were the case, then we would not have had conservative thinkers like F.A. Hayek and Sir Karl Popper, to name the few, and all-time problematic statesmen like Hitler, particularly from the West. Conversely, we would not have had critical thinkers from among the “vegetarian East.” The Buddha and, in modern times, Mahatma Gandhi could be cited as the significant examples in this regard. As we shall see immediately in the following lines, Buddha by preference was a vegetarian, but by compulsion he may not be one. Also, such recommendations look weak as they lack analytical

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strength and backing. To put it differently, such efforts assign naturalness to radicalism. According to this logic, those who are beef eaters are automatically radical. We have already mentioned that it is not the case. And those who do not eat beef are automatically conservative or orthodox. Is this the case? If cultural consciousness emanating from and shaped by beef eating was the sure guarantee to access radicalism, Buddha would never pass the test of such beef fundamentalists. Buddha was radical not by choice, but by very existential fate. As we all know, he avoided making choices in terms of food. And, ultimately, it became the cause of his Mahaparinirvana. Buddhist ethics ruled out any cultural coercion that basically emanates from such painful choices. In this sense, Buddha was not a pragmatist. He did not suggest using some thing as a means to achieve some end. It is possible to hold a radical position even without eating beef. Conversely, it is quite possible to take a most rabidly conservative position while eating beef. In this case, it is an affirmation of beef. However, within the cultural universe of Dalits, the Dalit middle class seems to have moved in two major directions: sanskritization and globalization. In a sociological context, which was tightly organized around the ideology of purity pollution, food played an important role in rendering a large section of people, Untouchables, unseeable and unapproachable. Cooked food acquires distinction as it carries a different and potent meaning. In fact, the significant part of social interaction is governed by the food. The power relationship is mediated through the restriction on food. Needless to say, food, when articulated through the ideology of purity pollution, creates social and ritual hierarchies that might appear to be completely absurd to some rational minds. I do not want to labor on this point, for it has been widely discussed in socio-anthropological literature in India and on India. However, the question of food and food-related discrimination is not simply the question of seeking amusement through offering an anthropological description of the food, including Dalit food (Khare 1992), but it raises a much more fundamental question of human dignity. We have seen in the above section that Indian social conditions relate food to Dalits only in a negative sense and not in an affirmative sense. These conditions have also changed over a period of time, leading to a kind of sanskritization of Dalits who now can afford to cook sweet dishes in their homes. The shift to sweet, however, is more out of social compulsion than of compulsion of the stomach. The Dalit would like to continue to be non-vegetarian, particularly with fish, but cannot do it (Pawar 2005). Cultural suppression or the suppression suggesting an inability to eat the food that one likes has to be understood in terms of compulsion. Maybe these Dalits reside in the upper caste locality and hence have to switch over to sweet just to keep the upper caste suspicion and wrath at bay and gain some freedom from anxiety. But this choice still falls within the same asymmetrical framework where the Dalits are imitating somebody’s food culture and thus deviating from their authentic taste for beef. Let me then deal with the conditions within which the choice of food guarantees both taste

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and dignity. What is this condition? Some of them might suggest, without any hesitation, “globalization” as such a condition which has the possibility of providing taste and dignity to Dalits. In fact, someone might argue that the Dalits have made a progressive move from sweet and beef to a range of tastes provided by globalization. Now they have a wider choice to select fast-food, like McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken, as well as ethnic foods like Chinese, Mexican, or Thai. It could be further argued that Dalits are enjoying the “double taste,” so to speak, in the age of globalization; one for the tongue (cooked food) and the other for the heart (music). One from the global food and another from the music that is being played while one is dining in a big restaurant in metropolitan areas. There is an aesthetic dimension to food as well. For example, in the urban centers, music is played so as to create a pleasant ambiance so that one is not condemned to eat food with melancholy. Some of the pro-modern, and therefore pro-global, might even justify it on the grounds that it is offering Dalits an opportunity to see themselves in the reverse role that they had to play during the feudal period. During the feudal period, Dalits were forced to use musical instruments, either a drum in northern India or halgi in the south or the Ghungarachi Kathi (baton with the bells on top) in the west, not so much to entertain the village lord, while he was eating, but to issue a gentle and melodious warning to the lord so that he could either delay or conclude his evening meals. The entry of a Dalit was considered as dangerous, particularly at the sacred time when the upper castes, the Brahmins, were taking their food. Taking food in the evening was considered as the most sacred and auspicious event in the cultural life of the village Pandit. The  presence of the Untouchable within the vicinity of the village around this auspicious time, therefore, was considered as polluting and hence undesirable. The purpose of this music was to announce their arrival in the village so that the upper caste could organize their sacred meals accordingly. The  music was played in order to ensure the well-being of the upper castes. The sandhy is less for feeding one’s belly and more for creating harmony between the spiritual and the material through these performative rituals. Dalit music has a function to avoid any polluting interruption produced by the very presence of the Untouchables. In this regard, it is necessary to mention that in a wider perspective, the music being played at the time of dining may not be to invoke either pleasure or avoid the repulsion, but it could be an undesirable source of disgust.16 Just imagine a musician in the restaurant playing a romantic tune in front of a person with a broken heart. It could be argued that cultural globalization arrives at a time of temptation for the Dalits.They now are free to choose their food and have a right to a variety of food both raw as well as cooked in restaurants. This right is significant in the context of when Dalits had no choice in terms of food. They survived on leftover food that was given to them by their local patrons. The Dalits always considered this Jhootan as the “poison bread,” as one Dalit literary writer sought to define

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Dalit food during the feudal period. If the society is equally rotten and decomposed like the food that gave only negative rights to Dalits, in such a situation one might endorse the rational capacity of Dalits to choose the food of their taste and liking. Some Dalits might find McDonald’s much more liberating as against the poison bread or Jhootan. Thus, the right to choose food has a definite solution to this decomposition.While the right to good food and quality food is desirable and could be defended in the context of the poison bread, however, it would not be possible to defend the free choice on moral ground. Why? There are tragic reasons as well as logical reasons that can explain the problems in enjoying free choice in regards to choosing food. Let me begin with a dramatic argument: choice in food has a tragic side as far as Dalits are concerned. Some Dalits can afford to eat food of their choice, and yet they are not able to exercise their choice over food. This is because they are still embedded in the community of the poor and hungry lot. Ironically, they have the material capacity to buy quality food from the open market, but they have no moral capacity to exercise this capacity. The politics of memory has completely destroyed their physical capacity that they could exercise for enjoying different kinds of food. Their physical capacity has also been seriously damaged by poverty and hunger that they suffered in the past. In the cultural present, the contradiction between tongue and stomach has become quite intense. That is to say, whatever is preferred by the tongue is rejected by the stomach and whatever is approved by the stomach is rejected by the tongue. Earlier, the Dalits, like other poor, could digest even stone when they were not getting Chirmure, roasted rice or Indian popcorn. Now they can get Chirmure, but they cannot digest even such soft stuff like Chirmure. Their digestive system has become so weak that they cannot enjoy this food. In this context, the notion of “capacity building” acquires a different meaning altogether. When one thinks of capacity building purely from an individualist point of view, then one finds that the material capacity militates against the physical capacity leading to cultural frustration. Thus, poverty has a function to create a cultural contradiction between two conditions: willing to taste the food, but unable to taste it. This is not to suggest that the rich do not  experience this contradiction. But there is one crucial difference between the two cases. The contradiction implicating Dalits is structurally rooted; to the extent that they have scarcity in taste because the history of starvation or half starvation has put their digestive system out of gear. In case of the rich, it is psychologically sustained. The rich have to sacrifice taste because of their excess at the earlier instance.

Dalits, Food, and Globalization from Below In  globalization, some well-to-do Dalits can afford to eat “quality” food. However, the moral embedded Dalit self would resolutely desist from enjoying this freedom to choose and eat food. This is because this self finds itself crushed

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under the moral burden of the counter memory of starvation. Counter memory involves a kind of confinement to one’s past experience. Memory is a subtle, but incarcerating restriction on our freedom. In the case of Dalits, and I am sure the other starving social sections, the history of deprivation and starvation would create this restriction on Dalits who then would find it morally difficult to enjoy the food. Most of the Dalits would withdraw from enjoying food that is cooked in their homes on an important occasion except for the 14th of April.17 In  rural Maharashtra, some of the Dalit men and women start crying at the time of eating food that is so laboriously cooked by women. They cry because this food summons their difficult past into cultural present. They refuse to forget the past. Most of the Dalit women find this a punishment because they want to enjoy the food. Also through memory we become bound to a set of moral obligations, the forgetting of which sanction a possible punishment. This sense of punishment is often expressed in the reaction of Dalit middle class families. In the above section, we have seen that Dalits produced music so as to create a spiritual context for the village Pandit, who then could finish his sacred job of eating without the fear of Untouchables. Now Dalits do not produce music, but are the beneficiary of modern/secular music being played at eating establishments studded with celebrities. But at the same time, one cannot ignore the music that the Dalit women produce in their houses. This music is different from the music played in five-star hotels. It is different both in terms of purpose and instrumentalities. It is different in purpose in the sense that, while music played in hotels is pleasant commentary on the surplus food, music played by Dalit women is the sad statement on scarcity of food. Let me explain this by citing a common situation that exists in the everyday experience of a half-starving family. In such households, inviting guests for food is a rare occasion. But one has to invite guests on some occasions. Most of the time, these guests go on an eating binge and upset the cooking calculation of Dalit women. Decency demands that these women communicate the situation to the guest in such a way that they understand. In this regard, it is also interesting to note that Dalit women also produce music by playing metallic cooking vessels. They  create a loud sound by beating a pan. As we all know, a vessel full of preparations does not create noise, it is the nearly empty pan that creates a noise. This music of the vessels thus is different from the music of malls, mountains, deserts, and the sea. The Dalits, particularly from Maharashtra, used cooking vessels/pans with strict ritual hierarchy. For example, Dalits used clay pots for cooking the meat of dead cattle, aluminum vessels for toliv (beef ), and steel vessels for cooking chicken and lamb. Dalit women took particular care in not mixing these vessels. They were kept separate. The clay pots were kept right outside the house. Thus, the Dalit did internalize the hierarchical framework that was devised by the Hindu Dharma Shastra. The notion of hierarchy was quite continuous across social situations in India. The globalized/modernized Dalits have gotten rid of this hierarchy. In the globalized Dalit houses, sophisticated cooking

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instruments have not only replaced clay pots, but they have also compressed the time of cooking. (Maggie bus Do Minutes). Most importantly, new kitchen wares like the dishwasher have effectively destroyed this hierarchy. Modernizing Dalits now  can claim that kitchen technology in their houses has destroyed the vessel hierarchy. However, in this regard, it has to be kept in mind that vessel-related hierarchy is not specific to Indian Dalits only. In fact, in different cultural food-related traditions and practices, one can find hierarchy associated with vessels. For example, in Jewish dietary laws, a pan used to fry a hamburger or a pot used to make stew becomes felishing (not usable). A bowl previously used for chicken soup cannot be used for ice cream.18 However, the introduction of technology in the kitchen has replaced the entire process into regression. These machines no more reflect or dispel the deductive smell of the spice preparation. This is because the food is not cooked, but produced through a machine. In the changing context of the kitchen, the modern kitchen with modern technology introduces a different kind of hierarchy, which is ultimately shaped by the overall social hierarchy that continues to exist even in the urban context. For example, stainless steel vessels are treated with some difference. These vessels are not used for cooking meat. For cooking beef, either metal or clay pots are used. Of course, the urban health-conscious rich people would use earthen pots for the organic method and to achieve the exotic taste of the food. They would use the non-stick pans for cooking the food in the urban centers. Finally, in cultural globalization, from among the vast mass of the Dalit population, it is only a microscopic section that can enjoy the recipe offered by this aspect of globalization. The rest of the Dalits do not, in actuality, get the chance of enjoying global food. Those who feel deprived of this cultural taste, therefore, derive subsidized satisfaction in the local food practices. Thus, those Dalits who cannot get chewing gum, find an appropriate replacement in local chewing gum: Chun Chunaya.19 The question that one needs to ask is, should one hunt or aspire for global taste? If yes, then should s/he wait until everyone gets the real taste of the global product? Should not the Dalit follow the moral philosophy of Tathagata from the Buddhist philosophy or altruism from the Western philosophical tradition (Heldke 1992: 303)?

Notes 1 Loksatta, Mumbai (Marathi daily) June 17, 2009. 2 This was the poem that was read by one of the known Dalit poets on the Marathi Door Darshan some years ago. 3 This perception is available in the oral tradition of Dalit women in parts of Vidarbha region of Maharashtra. 4 These are mostly the peasant’s castes which once upon a time were the service and artisan caste in the jajmani system (a term that refered to the hereditary Indian social caste system and to the interaction between upper castes and lower castes) in the village economy during the feudal period.

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5 This cultural history has been commonly accepted by the historians who worked on Maharashtra. Eleanor Zelliot’s (1992) work could be cited as the relevant work in this regard. 6 These are the upper caste from Bengal. See Manu’s Dharmik code. 7 Twice born in Hinduism refers to members of the Indian castes of Brahmins, Kshatriyas, and Vaisyas, who undergo a spiritual rebirth and initiation in adolescence. 8 My own survey of the Musahar of Motihari District and Maharajganj in Uttar Pradesh. 9 In the Goa Seminar, a person from Kerala actually said this. 10 The Hindu nationalists attribute it to Anandibai Joshi. In fact, she was very particular in observing the “Indian” tradition. 11 In Kolkatta Maharashtra Mandal, one finds such kinds of claim. 12 One of the Maratha public intellectuals shared this information in 1982, at Kolhapur. 13 A meal made up of a selection of various dishes, including a balanced of six different flavors: sweet, salt, bitter, sour, astringent, and spicy, served in a single plate. 14 This is popular in parts of Maharashtra, particularly four districts, Akola, Amaravati, Yeotmal, and Buldhana Districts of the Vidarbha region of the state (Guru 2000). 15 Rao sahib Kasbe in the Pune seminar said he could not become decaste because he could not eat beef prepared by a Mating. 16 I thank Juliana Di Giustini for sharing this information with me. 17 This is Ambedkar’s birth anniversary day. 18 On Jewish practices see www.religionfacts.com/judaism/practices/kosher.htm, accessed in June 2015. 19 These are small pieces of chewing gum size, made out of the fat of cow or buffalo fat. Dalit children chew them like chewing gum. They  are tastier than chewing gum which has a different purpose altogether. Chewing gum is aimed at fighting foul breath and maintaining the gums healthy. The late Arun Kale, a Dalit poet, ironically calls Chuncunay the local replacement for chewing gum.

References Curtin, Deane (1992), “Food/Body/Person”, in Deane W. Curtin and Lisa M. Heldke (eds.), Cooking, Eating, Thinking: Transformative Philosophy of Food. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 3–22. Curtin, Deane, and Heldke, Lisa (1992), “Introduction”, in Deane W. Curtin and Lisa M. Heldke (eds.), Cooking, Eating, Thinking: Transformative Philosophy of Food. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, xiii–xx. Dangle, Arjun (ed.) (1983), Poison Bread: Translations from Modern Marathi Dalit Literature. New Delhi: Orient Longman. Guru, Gopal (2000), “Dalit Cultural Politics in Maharashtra”, in Ghanshyam Shah (ed.), Political Identity of Dalits. New Delhi: Sage. Heldke, Lisa M. (1992), “Food Politics, Political Food”, in Deane W. Curtin and Lisa M. Heldke (eds.), Cooking, Eating, Thinking: Transformative Philosophy of Food. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 301–326. Joshi, Mahadev Shastri (ed.) (1972), Bharatiya Sankritik Kosh. Pune: Bharatiya Sanksitik Kosh. Kambel, Arun Krushnaji (1996), Jantatil Ambedkarnche lekh. Mumbai: Granthali. Kamble, Baby (2008), The  Prisons We Broke. Chennai: Orient Blackswan. Translated by Maya Pandit. Kharat, Shankarao (1987), Maharashtratil Maharancha Itihas. Pune: Sugawa.

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Khare, Ravindra S. (ed.) (1992), The Eternal Food: Gastronomic Ideas and Experiences of Hindus and Buddhists. Albany, NY: State University of New York. Pawar, Urmila- (2005), Aaydan. Mumbai: Grantahli. Srinivas, Mysore N. (1952), Religion and Society amongst the Coorgs of South India. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Surve, Narayan (1987), Sampurna Survey. Mumabi: Lok wangmay Gruha. Valmiki, Om Prakash (1996), Jhootan. New Delhi:Vani Publication. Zelliot, Eleanor (1992), From Untouchable to Dalit: Essays on the Ambedkar Movement. New Delhi: Manohar.

10 TASTES, AROMAS, AND KNOWLEDGES Challenges to a Dominant Epistemology Maria Paula Meneses1

Voices that Reveal Webs of Knowledge Ignored by Hegemonic History Can women’s knowledge, in the form of recipes which are part of the network of knowledges that spans the Indian Ocean, produce a broader image of contacts and history that extends beyond the predominant colonial imaginary? Based on a series of conversations and learning supplemented with information gathered from various media and archival sources,2 this chapter takes up the challenge of the epistemologies of the South (Santos 2007, 2014, 2018)3 in an attempt to understand how food, invoking other histories, cultural contacts, and processes, enables other ontologies to emerge in the construction of networks of knowledge through the struggles of women. At the heart of this proposal is a journey through aromas and tastes, paths that have been silenced by the dominant colonial narrative and the hegemony of national histories.4 Through the close links between existence, knowledge, and power on both sides of the Indian Ocean, many women who are responsible for the survival of their families and community on a daily basis were, and continue to be, dehumanized and transformed into objects, bodies without knowledge. Identifying the contemporary abyssal lines and underlying power-knowledge-existence relations is fundamental to overcoming relations based on silencing and subalternation and to enabling the radical co-presence of human beings and their forms of knowledge (Santos 2007, 2018). The  sense of belonging to places through tastes allows different sensory and affective connections to be forged. This ecology of tastes enables us to rediscover bridges between the known and the silenced, the familiar and the strange, thus ensuring the (re)existence of women in the struggles against oppression. The set of narratives which I have

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gathered are an example of the ecology of knowledges which are fundamental to the elaboration of an alternative way of thinking about alternatives that can renew and strengthen social struggles, helping to consolidate proposals that reinforce post-abyssal epistemologies. Daily life in the coastal areas of Mozambique has taught me a lot about the importance of networks of connections in the Indian Ocean. Travelers used these routes, bringing knowledge and tastes with them. These historical networks suggest bridges based on affections, but that have remained silenced. Whether in Mozambique or in India, the specific places and themes covered in this chapter found their way into my path, imposing themselves as an epistemic challenge. I had read news reports and articles and talked to friends, colleagues, and students. Their observations, suggestions, questions, and descriptions of events in everyday life and the centrality of food transformed this journey into tastes and aromas. Relations based on friendship and closeness took the form of long conversations, of learning about cookery and, above all, many happy times shared with many women and men. It  was these conversations that formed the backbone of this text, posing various challenges: written, abyssal science is challenged by the epistemologies of the South, supported by oral knowledge (Santos 2018: 186). They allowed the conversations to flow with none of the extractivist qualities of the interview. The  conversations and learning were remarkable encounters: they allowed for long dialogues on experiences and knowledge, creating more horizontal links in terms of power relations. At the hands of these women, I began to understand how products are transformed into culture, an experience filled with aromas, tastes, textures, and affection. These cookery lessons taught me that educating the senses is radically empirical, bringing new dimensions to the meaning of humanity. At the same time, in demonumentalizing the written text (Santos 2018: 186– 187), these conversations problematize the hegemony of scientific rationality. In preparing food, using the kitchen as a laboratory for knowledge and flavors, the senses of smell, taste, and touch become central, although they are dismissed in modern thinking, since they “threaten the abstract and impersonal regime of modernity by virtue of their radical interiority, boundary-transgressing propensities and emotional potency” (Classen et al. 1994: 5). Challenging the abyssal line, which insists on vision as the primary faculty for understanding the world, is a response to the challenge presented by Boaventura de Sousa Santos through the epistemologies of the South: refounding the political imagination and fortifying social struggles against domination and oppression in the world (2018: 126–127). In a world in which women and their knowledge of culinary skills and food as are still represented as absent due to very unequal power relations, redeeming them is an eminently political act: it is an exercise in cognitive justice. The  main objective of this chapter is to (re)connect two places on the shores of the Indian Ocean through food and the meanings it evokes, as a way of experiencing potentially post-abyssal (individual and collective)

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transits and belonging.5 Studying food and knowledges involved in its preparation in a dynamic way, circulating between different contexts, helps us to understand the biographical trajectories and meanings linked to the use of a particular object (such as food) (Appadurai 1991: 13). The challenge is to study the knowledges and objects that we use to prepare food in terms of their continuous movement and fusion, revealing the dynamics of the social context in which these processes take place (Ingold 2011: 136). Through the social history of food6 and those who prepare it, it is possible to recover networks of reciprocality and solidarity and (re)discover knowledge and histories that have been silenced and subalternated.

Learning the History of the Tastes of the World The Indian Ocean is an ocean of connections. The reports of multiple regional and transoceanic links are part of its legacy, which include accounts of travels, trading, family connections, and religious pilgrimages (Sheriff 1987; Subrahmanyam 2011; Alpers 2014). These real or imaginary itineraries reveal another historical landscape in which the Indian Ocean stands out as a centuries-old network of meeting points. However, viewed from the North, this web unravels, replaced by links between the colonizing centers and their (former) colonies. Provincializing the history of the world is based on rethinking the relations between the spaces which shape cultures and the areas of contact between them, in addition to the narratives stored in the colonial archives.7 This questioning of colonialism assumes that it is not a finished past, but a contemporary metamorphosed reality that still informs and defines the present. On the basis of this premise, it is possible to imagine a network of other histories (Subrahmanyam 2011) signaling continuities and transformations within relations based on power and knowledge. However, these interpretations do not consider how tastes also travel, a characteristic feature of knowledge encounters in this ocean area.8 Long before the imposition of the modern colonial-capitalist system, the Indian Ocean connections fostered trade and religious, political, and cultural collaboration (on a regional and transcontinental level). On the ancient sea routes travelers, wise men, priests, and traders all crossed paths, aided by the monsoon winds. Linen, silk, pepper, ginger, silver rings, and quantities of pearls and rubies are described by Castanheda (1552–1561) as the products traded by the Moors on the coast of Sofala (nowadays Mozambique) in exchange for gold and other products (Lee 1829: 57). The archives I consulted, whether in Goa or Maputo, describe the transport of edible plants (such as coconut, mango, and rice) and spices (pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, and ginger) throughout the Portuguese colonial empire, across the Indian Ocean, to the Atlantic.9 In  the early nineteenth century, a report by Sebastião Xavier Botelho provides a detailed description of the trading that was taking place on the Mozambique coast. The  goods included silk from China, tea, cashew wine,

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coconut sugar, pitch from Malacca, areca nuts, fishing nets, fabrics, and various items of clothing and arms (1835: 373). In addition, a document from the Goa Customs House10 lists various products “imported” from Mozambique, including peanuts, rice, and nachenim.11 These foodstuffs reflect contacts and mutual cultural appropriations which have a long history (Meneses 2013). As the extensive documentation consulted shows, Goa functioned as a trading post, linking several coastal cities from Mozambique to Timor. The seasonings typical of “Indian” food, as research based on the Goa archives indicates, did not all come from this region. One of the first documents that provides a full account of the use of various foodstuffs and their origins was written by Garcia da Horta in the mid sixteenth century, in Goa. Correspondence dating from the end of the eighteenth century indicates that the cloves and nutmeg came from Timor, while the cinnamon was imported from Ceylon (the present-day Sri Lanka).12 A few years later the Livros das Monções (Monsoon Books) noted the despatch of musk, opium, gum arabic, incense, nutmeg, and tamarind to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.13 The  detailed descriptions of commercial exchanges available in the archives reflect the extensive cultural contact areas (Pratt 1992: 4) associated with the knowledge, flavors, and aromas that still characterize the region today. In  these descriptions, urban areas such as the Island of Mozambique, Zanzibar, Mombasa, Cairo, Mumbai, and Goa are described as cosmopolitan zones of contact for the transcontinental cultural circuits (Meneses 2016, 2018). Moreover, both men and women could be found on these journeys. In 1842, the passengers disembarking at the port of Goa from a ship that had sailed from the Island of Mozambique included a Hindu woman called Rucau. According to the Customs House records, amongst the various other goods she declared, she had brought with her a pestle to grind spices, a rice stone mill, sesame oil, salt, jaggery (palm sugar), a copper pan, a frying pan, tea, copra, cinnamon, saffron, and ginger. Another passenger, named Maria Leo, declared that she was carrying a barrel of achar (South Asian pickle), as well as ivory and rhinoceros horns which were gifts from her husband who had stayed in Mozambique.14 In addition to trading, the contacts forged in the Indian Ocean also included family connections. From the end of the nineteenth century, the very mixed group of people from Asia would become known as the “Indian community.” It  included Vanya merchants (Hindu Baniya) in Daman and Diu, who were Gujarati, Goanese Catholics, and Muslims from India and Zanzibar, amongst others. Relations in the prazos in Zambezia15 in the late nineteenth century reflected the political and family connections developed in various parts of the empire, from Goa to Mozambique (Isaacman 1982; Alpers 2009), as can be seen in Gavicho de Lacerda’s description: [In Zambezia], the tradition calls for rich and diverse repasts. […] Our first meal at the house was unforgettable and we felt our palates to be on fire for days afterwards, since the delicacies were highly spiced.

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Curry, until then completely unknown to us, is an indispensable dish in all meals in Africa. It is particularly potent, and the ingredients that complement it are even spicier. […] It finds its way into everybody’s house, from the poorest to the richest. […] Curry must have been introduced to Eastern Africa by the Indians who have migrated to those coastal regions long ago. Proof of this is the fact that curry with rice is not as widespread in the West [of Africa]. Since we have mentioned curry, we cannot avoid presenting the recipe. Usually it is made with chicken, shrimps, meat, or fish, or even with vegetables. The rice is cooked separately from the curry. The curry stew is cooked in a pan where one adds, besides the meat or fish, coconut milk, which is the main ingredient. […]. One then adds piripiri (a small chili, very hot, cut into tiny pieces) to the pan, and a well-known seasoning from India made of saffron, cumin, cilantro seeds, clover, etc. The cook has to stir the stew slowly. […] The curry is never eaten by itself. It  is followed by other dishes which are very spicy and, to be complete, it has to have “all its killers”, as people say here.  […] Mango or lemon achar, which is made with pieces of these fruits, preserved in salt, with lots of piripiri and lemon juice and which, in order to last for a long time, has to be exposed to the direct sunlight for a couple of days; paparim, a kind of fritter like the ones we prepare for Christmas except that instead of being sweet it is spicy, which is made with flour from a local bean (seroco bean) and is deep fried or roasted in an open fire; bambolim, a dried fish from India, like balchão and tamarind although the latter are canned; mucuane, finely chopped greens made with the greens from sweet peas, manioc, or beans, cooked with coconut milk and piripiri; chatenin: made with roasted tomato, that is then pressed with a spoon, together with fresh cilantro and, of course, piripiri. (1929: 5, 12–14) Focusing on the importance of the aromas and tastes, this account emphasizes the art of hospitality and care in the region. The sensuous descriptions of the food convey an image of Mozambique as part of the Indian Ocean world. However, two parallel processes would alter this image: the intensifying European bourgeois revolutions and colonial conquests, particularly from the eighteenth century onwards. In  the Indian Ocean, the colonial project would be imposed on the basis of three civilizational references—hygiene, order, and beauty (Laporte 2000: 84–85)—which were fundamental to legitimizing the metropolitan colonial order. Within this triad, which was the product of a capitalist, sexist, and colonial environment, other smells and flavors were considered to belong to inferior peoples who had been relegated to the status of subaltern alterity. In the modern rationale, feeling the pulse of the world through vision contributes toward preserving power relations that silence knowledge and the presence of women involved in the struggle for

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social and cognitive justice, thus preventing any dialogue with other imaginaries of another possible world. This epistemic violence, involving the radical exclusion of sensory experiences from modern thinking, has translated into ontological violence, transforming these women into subaltern, silenced nonbeings and serving as an example of the impossibility of co-presence on both sides of the abyssal line.

Tastes that Create Relations Preparing a dish involves learning in the kitchens which are our laboratories. In Mozambique, as in other parts of the world, cookery is performative: the cook, the family, their friends, and other guests take part in the act, eating, commenting on, and appreciating the food. In  this region of the world, the kitchen is the women’s domain, and they control the laboratories, as I learned from the countless meetings and conversations which form the basis of this study.

The Knowledges of Curry On the Island of Mozambique, the conversation I had with D. Fátima,16 who insisted on teaching me how to cook “our curry,” unfolded around learning about the meanings intertwined in the dish: Cooking means not  being ashamed of having your hands smelling of food. That smell means you like the people you are making the curry for!  […] Slowly, you fine chop the onion and the garlic, … cut up the piri-piri.You stir them into the pan and braise them. But the other ingredients have to be prepared beforehand, then you add them in slowly.You pour the coconut milk in slowly while the curry is still cooking… […] You cook everything slowly because you have to let the flavors penetrate the fish. […] Now add the seasoning. If you want to make a real curry, you have to buy the spices and pound them together with the benga [pestle], after you have roasted them. The seasoning you get in the shop? you don’t even know how long ago it was made! Then you have to grate fresh coconut to make the milk. You have to choose the coconuts carefully to get good milk! The final flavor of a curry depends on who makes it—sweeter, hotter… In  Panjim (Goa), years later, I went back to being an apprentice cook. With a friend, D. Luísa,17 I pursued the path of knowledge that is required to prepare a curry as “we do here.” As before in Mozambique, I was in for a surprise: “You cook curry with coconut as well?” From her and other friends, I was learning to detect the subtle differences in flavor which differentiate a “Goan curry” (i.e., one

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prepared in Catholic families) from a “Hindu” Goan curry.18 I went with them on trips to the market and took part in the negotiations involved in buying spices: Each person has their own way of making curry, which they learn from their family. In our [Goan Catholic] family, curry has to have coconut and piri-piri; without that, it isn’t curry. You have to choose the coconuts carefully to get good milk. Then break open the coconut and grate it, together with the spices. In a normal curry, I use turmeric, cumin, garlic, and piri-piri, pounding everything into a paste that can be used for a fish, prawn, or even meat curry. Other people might add different spices, like cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and so on ….The  Hindus prefer ambottik, which is hotter and more acidic. It’s a fish curry made with vinegar instead of coconut. On another occasion, in Maputo, the invitation to lunch was preceded by a conversation about the art of making curry. Having been asked to help grate the coconut and pound it into a paste with the other ingredients, I naturally began talking about my time in Goa. The response was again surprising: “So they do that as well? It  isn’t a Mozambican recipe?! When I was a child my mother always said; this is our food, from here, Mozambican food.”19 And, in fact, the excellent savor also showed the unique properties of this cuisine, which is both local and global at the same time. Cooking a curry is a risky venture, reflecting the conquest of resistances (Collingham 2006). Solids and liquids are blended in the pan under the wise hand of the cook. They are cooked on a low heat, awaiting the judicious addition of spices.Time, wisdom, and care ensure the final result, which whets the palate with the smell that arises halfway through the cooking process, when the aromas intensify. Curry is an example of how individual features become a unique singularity that awakens the eroticism of the sense of taste. When preparing food in kitchens, knowledge is appropriated and incorporated through practical experience. This was experienced when preparing curry on the Island of Mozambique. In  her discussion on the “thoughtful practice” of food preparation, Lisa Heldke (1992: 218) refers to culinary knowledge as “corporeal knowledge,” pointing out that it is a matter of factual awareness, but is also experienced through the body. The importance of experience is evident in the “old hands” which D. Isabel referred to when she was preparing curry: “You can taste it! My hands are old, but the taste of the food comes from my hands into the pan.”20 The recognition that knowledge does not lie “in the mind,” but is practiced and experienced through the various senses involved in preparing food, was evident in D. Isabel’s reply when I asked her about the recipe for curry: “I don’t know any recipes … sometimes I don’t even remember things well … it’s only when I get to the market and start thinking about what we’re going to make that I feel the recipe in my head.”

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The Badjias (Bhajis) that Feed “The People” Cookery of any kind is based on a grammar of knowledges that is frequently expressed orally. The  recipes transmitted through everyday practices express histories and cultural encounters, reflecting lived experiences and situated struggles. Cooking is a way of knowing and being, as I learned from the badjias.21 2018, Maputo, at the entrance to the school where I studied in the 1980s, from a large frying pan balanced precariously on a bench set up on the pavement comes the aroma of badjias, bringing back memories of my secondary school days. D. Luísa spoons one more helping of the thick badjia batter into the oil that has been bubbling since early morning.The batter is prepared at home the day before. It is a “family” recipe, made from nhemba bean flour mixed with various seasonings: coriander, garlic, and raw chopped onion. The badjia hisses gently when it hits the oil; it is turned a few times in the pan, and then it is ready. D. Luísa cuts open a bread roll, fills it with a freshly fried badjia, and hands it to me. I thank her and step aside to make way for a young student who has been waiting his turn behind me; I bite into the bread, and the taste takes me straight back to my school days.22 Badjias are still an essential part of street food. 2015, Panjim, Goa. I am in the State Central Library when a colleague asks me if I want a vada pao.23 I am working in Goa on food and I accept.Tarang, who has offered to go and buy this unknown item, is soon back with two parcels wrapped in newspaper. My colleague hands one to me.When I open it, I find a soft square bread roll with something that looks like a badjia inside, covered with green chutney. The first bite of the pav (“pão,” meaning bread) and vada (fritter) takes me back to Maputo. Only the chutney, flavored with piri-piri, coriander, and mint, is unfamiliar. She asks me if I like it. How can I explain the sensations? A perfect contrast of flavors and textures fills my mouth and, at the same time, takes me back to my own country. The first bite was a delight and made me a regular customer at the small store near the library where the vada pao were made. In  Goa, vada pao is popular. The  conversations I have had with the colleague who introduced me to vada pao revealed a lot about food and identity processes. The main ingredients in the vada pav—potato and bread—were brought to India by the Portuguese from the seventeenth century onwards.The only key ingredient that comes from the region—or even from India—is the besan, or chickpea flour. At a time when political tensions extend to the most diverse areas, food cannot escape.The parties that support Hindutva24 have begun promoting “Indian” cuisine based mainly on vegetarian dishes made with produce that comes from the state, claiming vada pao as one of the “typically” Indian foods (Dalal 2015). However, where I bought vada pao in Panjim, there were no doubts: “it is Goan food.”25

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During my stay in Goa, I am learning how food such as vada pao/badjias that is linked to a particular territory serves a space for memories or mnemonic site, incorporating concrete traces of a colonial past that have no representation, an “absent past” in Portuguese, Indian, and Mozambican historiography. In Maputo, the badjia sellers share stories of struggles that are similar to those of the women I spoke to in Goa (Wilson 2015). Badjias are a vital source of income for many families: “I start by pounding the beans in the evening, so that I can put the crushed beans to soak. After 2 a.m., I start preparing the batter for the badjias. I sell badjias from 4 in the morning, when the workers and students are leaving for work,” said D. Irene,26 one of the badjias venders who spoke to me in between selling her wares. This conversation took place in the early hours of the morning as customers were stopping to buy hot badjias. The  greetings exchanged with various individuals showed that Irene has regular customers, who were happy to chat about how business was going or the difficulties of life. For Irene, separated from the father of her four children for a long time, this work is her main means of supporting her family: “my children can go to school because I have this business, I’ve got my regular customers! Everyone loves the badjias I make. It’s food Mozambicans eat while struggling for their daily life.” Before Mozambique became independent in 1975, badjias were the food of the black working class; they belonged to the black suburbs. As with other aspects of everyday life, food was affected by the revolution. In the early years of independence, it was in short supply. There were a number of reasons for this: the growing demand due to the greater purchasing power of the population, the blockade mounted by apartheid South Africa and the then Rhodesia, 27 neighboring countries on which Mozambique depended economically, and political changes which included the nationalization of land and various agricultural companies whose owners had fled the country. The result was a shortage of food supplies and the arrival of other types of food, such as badjias, in the city center that was being reshaped.28 In other words, the lack of food and ingredients not only affected the ability to prepare traditional dishes, but also the way in which the Mozambicans understood food as a marker of identity. As these conversations emphasized, food reveals sensory, temporal, and spatial qualities that transform it into an essential component of cultural systems (Douglas 1991). In the same way, badjias, as street food, show how changes in what people eat and where they eat it—the street—constitute the main ground for claiming this space. The streets of the cement city are being occupied by subaltern knowledge and tastes that come from the outskirts of the city.

The World Experienced through Multiple Sensations Touching and tasting in depth, two forms of immediate contact, allow for a relational understanding of intimacy and the body, providing a grammar for the most intimate forms of being and knowing. In  grating the coconut and

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grinding up the spices, the smell, taste, and sensation of the texture of the mixture taught me about the use of the body as a sensory organ. In Goa, people often eat with their fingers: in various shared meals, I feel that cutlery is set on the table in deference to me. The  challenge has been learning how to eat with my fingers.29 This act is preceded by a hygiene ritual which brings me closer to the food I eat. When using my fingers, there is no separation between me and the food. The fingers learn how to package the food and combine textures and tastes before delivering them to the mouth— and at the end of the meal, as a sign of appreciation, they are licked. Licking is also a way of sensuously experiencing food and the body, enjoying the desire aroused by food. In a captivating poem, Boaventura de Sousa Santos explores the close link between sexual desire and food, an act that satisfies both mind and body, the experience of Mozambique. Eating the mast with the lobster grilled on its flame. Saffron gold. Smell of the sea on land. Touch of madness. Roasted. Thinking, enough. Feeling, not enough. Hand in white mulatto coconut. White coconut mulatto coconut. Coco loco tocossado. Wuputsu for gatherings. Smooth xinoni and sura. Until the restaurant is wide open. The plates licked. Lick. Linger Taste of the ocean on a finger. Season. Not garlic salt. Lion saffron. Simmering cinnamon. Season and harden. Harden. Salt of the evening salt of the night. Salt of the morning sweat (Santos 2017: 76, 78)30 Sensing deeply highlights the relational existence between the “I” and the other person I love, who wants me, with whom I dialogue. The tangible connection emphasizes the feeling and the bond so that the vision, sound, taste, and smell are appreciated and shared, even if they are not consciously represented. How can we revive the literal taste and sensory, corporeal experience to understand ontological and epistemological diversity in the world? One of the key ideas in the epistemologies of the South is that understanding the world extends far beyond a Eurocentric understanding of the world (Santos 2018).

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For a long time, European philosophy has denied any aesthetic legitimacy to experiencing with the tongue, although it speculates on taste in general. In separating the “I” from the world, sight creates the illusion of a literally autonomous rational faculty. Associated with this hierarchical dissociation is the idea that the distance between the one who knows and the object that is perceived reflects a “cognitive, moral and aesthetic advantage” (Korsmeyer 1999: 12). The other senses are seen as too close and incapable of establishing the necessary analytical distance from the object of perception. Gradually, knowledge has ceased to be understood as embodied, with modern science conceiving of the senses as indispensable, but untrustworthy vehicles for understanding the world, which is controlled by reason (Santos 2018: 166). As Leong-Salobir et al. (2016: 11) have argued, aesthetics emerged as a discursive field in European philosophy in the eighteenth century, when it was claimed that literal taste was unconscious, subjective, and too intimate for any rational output. However, this consensus no longer has any legitimate basis. Thinking in terms of the South and of bodies that are reclaiming knowledges and power, it can be seen that knowledge is no longer possible without corporeal experiences, which are unthinkable without senses and sensations (Santos 2018: 165). Merleau-Ponty (1992: 89) points out that to a large extent we have “unlearnt” what it means to think as a body. It  is through our senses that we know and consume the world and become part of it. In  terms of food, although the natural environment influences the tastes, it is the cultural aspect, the preparation of food, that creates the flavor of place which is embodied in the relationship between food and eating, together at mealtimes. The  taste and aroma of food, which is a way of making direct contact with the outside world, is also a way of interpreting reality. The  actual way of cooking and the act of sharing food create cultural hierarchies and even exclusion. As Boaventura de Sousa Santos points out, overcoming any case of abyssal exclusion involves experiencing mutuality, feeling the world by being aware of its asymmetries and the urgent need for reciprocality (2018: 167). By  failing to recognize other ways of sensing the world, in contexts which have experienced—and continue to experience—the triple violence that marks our times, the exclusion or subalternation of other senses continues to reproduce hegemonic power relations and reshapes abyssal exclusions. Reasons experienced through emotions require other approaches to being, living, and experiencing the world. The rationale of the epistemologies of the South emerges when we live together eating and savoring, tempering conversations on knowledge whilst savoring affection. For Grandmother Ndzima, Cooking is the most private and riskiest act. You can put tenderness or hatred into food. You can pour flavoring or poison into the pan. Who would be responsible for the purity of the sieve or the pestle? How could I leave this intimate task in the hands of some anonymous person?

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Unthinkable, never in my life, subjecting yourself to a cook you’ve never even seen. Cooking isn’t a job […]. Cooking is a way of loving others. (Couto 2003: 86) Through recipes we can step beyond any colonial representation that denies the contribution of the women of the South; in recipes we can listen to the struggles and reconstruct the archives of knowledges witnessed by women within the circuits of colonial violence, trade relations, and the diaspora (Meneses 2013). The knowledge which recipes reveal through the voices of those who prepare them is both profoundly local and, at the same time, has a universal dimension, due to the nature of the themes and ingredients. It is situated knowledge, experienced intensely through the smells, tastes, and tenderness that clearly cannot be captured in writing. It is knowledge that is powerful enough to strengthen social struggles because it enables reasons unknown to cold reasoning to be created, warm reasons that nurture the struggle and mobilize a sense of solidarity (Santos 2018: 190). In helping to recover the histories of non-beings, these oral archives reconfigure  the re-existence of the South, confronted with countless attempts at annihilation in the form of genocide, slavery, patriarchalism, colonization, and the eradication of cultural memories. By including women as full subjects in the areas in which they are active, we increase the possibility of challenging the hegemony of modern scientific knowledge. In  studying the diverse food contexts throughout the world, it is possible to identify local alternatives, the concrete utopias for innovation and sustainability that are emerging. The challenge is to give them credibility by making them better known, decolonizing the imagination, and expanding cognitive justice (Meneses 2009b, 2018).

Tasting Contacts in the World Movement and contact between cultures is a key characteristic of human beings. Movement changes the materiality of things because it implies the transfer of objects or practices (including adaptation) that may produce different materialities, depending on the paths that are followed and the changes that are introduced (Basu and Coleman 2008: 328). Paradoxically, food is based on the myth of belonging to the “local.” Any cookery recipe has its roots: the cultural context that generates the knowledges that creates the dish, the ingredients, and the utensils. However, this does not mean that recipes cannot travel; on the contrary, they adapt flexibly to new circumstances, reinserting themselves into the new “local.” It is the relationship between products and also between products and transformation processes that makes a recipe what it is and gives it individuality, transforming the kitchen, the place where the food is prepared, into a laboratory for cooking feelings. The warmth of hospitality was revealed in lively conversations about the preparation of food and, above all, through

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the discovery of food and recipes that link Goa and Mozambique. Words for specific dishes such as bebinca, samosas, rissoles, sura, achar pickles, apas, and sannas, or even ingredients such as lanho31 or nachenim, which are common to both sides of the Indian Ocean, reveal forgotten encounters and a grammar of knowledges in the fusion of tastes and textures prepared in the kitchen.32 Women rarely follow recipes for this kind of cookery. They add, subtract, or change the ingredients, depending on what they have at hand. Hence, the dishes travel to different territories and circulate amongst different cultural groups, re-emerging with new names, tastes, and textures. The conversations which form the basis of this chapter show how marginalized narratives convey a deep, politically structured understanding of everyday struggles; they also reveal embodied experiences that have profound implications for understanding human relations in contexts socially defined by the inequality resulting from the oppression which defines our times. Listening became an art, a political act practiced through closeness and contact; in this sense, it inevitably invokes the corporeality of those involved in conversation, whose responses are expressed by the body. The histories conveyed in recipes contain the knowledge and flavors of the past, although they each resonate in specific embodied ways. Their transformative potential is realized through the reciprocity of intercultural translation, when listening and being listened to becomes a transformational challenge (Lambek 2002). In the case of the Indian Ocean, the oral and written archives show that the penetration of European trade combined both a formal presence with more informal means (Alpers 2014). The Portuguese themselves (and other Europeans) used the existing trade networks in the Indian Ocean to obtain products desired in Europe. The initial phase of the European presence on the east coast of Africa can be described as a transition from control of commerce and knowledge by different social groups to colonial-capitalist control by European groups (Meneses 2009a). Nowadays, the actual sense(s) of place are part of a complex set of relations—cultural crossovers involving people, food, time, space, and emotions. Long-term transoceanic contacts are revealed in cultural exchanges, making recipes an archive of knowledge. In cooking, women are sharing recipes whose histories are a way of thinking about the world. They tell of relations based on violence, domination, and subordination which define the lives of the narrators: In the days of the [settlers’] colons, here on the island, there was no restaurant where you could eat a curry like ours; the restaurants served Indian food from Goa, using their recipes. Maybe we used to cook like that a long time ago … I don’t know. But the Goans wanted to be seen as Portuguese, as whites. And the Europeans only ate it [curry] when they were invited to Goan homes. Nowadays, I think people who visit the island prefer this Indian curry because it reminds them of the old days, colonial times …

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Even those few white people [who] eat curry with us, blacks… People eat with their fingers, you have to wash your hands properly and learn how to do it. But in those days they’d say—you’re a native, you eat with your fingers! And it hasn’t changed much…33 In colonial times, the main social division was between the colonizer and the colonized. However, the debate on the role of women had already begun. As a result, although the women who reached positions of power recovered the right to self-identification, this process of reoccupying being and knowledge did not  extend to the whole of society. Subaltern women are still unable to make the best of the “right to a voice,” either because their knowledge remains silenced or because the concept and knowledge they express are not  recognized. Here, the exchange of knowledges is still defined by inequalities. Yet food is power—and this power derives not only from controlling consumption, production, or distribution, but also the links between gastronomy and identity, food and knowledge. Through conversations and by savoring the dishes that have been prepared, the unequal relations that still define these societies are being renegotiated. Moreover, through deep, reflexive listening, it is possible to uncover multisensory, locally situated histories that reveal knowledge beyond the colonial historiographical canon. Although telling stories is obviously an oral, performative form of communication, it also involves other forms of communication such as gesture, touch, smell, and taste. Food and the sensations it arouses present us with the process of ongoing negotiation between agency and limitation, people and places. The journeys of people and goods have combined, on the shores of the Indian Ocean, to shape culinary landscapes. In fact, there is perhaps nothing more omnipresent on the two sides of this ocean than vada pao/badjia or curry. Hence, both represent “absent” cultural links, the sign of a shared history between what is nowadays India and the western shores of the Indian Ocean, particularly Mozambique. In this sense, these dishes (and the attempt by the colonial and national narrative to selectively forget these historical connections) function as markers of a geographical culinary contact zone in terms of the way they are prepared and consumed. As an example of the resistance of subaltern knowledges and tastes, the badjia/vada pao and the curry, as a metaphor, allude to a wider history, acknowledging the role which cultures throughout the world have played in establishing this connection through taste. It  reflects what Vergès (2006) describes as Creole cuisine,34 which renounces purity and any attempt at essentialism, a cuisine that embodies transethnic and transcultural processes and practices. Challenging silencing and subalternation, the various cuisines have been borrowing, reworking, and adapting each other’s flavors and knowledge in a form of creolization: “imitation, appropriation, and translation” (Vergès 2006: 245).

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The landscape suggested by the flavors of the Indian Ocean is immensely rich, filled with centuries of history and knowledge. Food challenges the essentialist barriers that separate cultures, traverse time, and permeate the life of every generation. Defining paths for encounters and identifying possible contact zones involve connecting different ways of thinking and feeling, allowing the various histories, examples, and concepts to interact in a way that is not hierarchical. There is also an invitation to find ourselves in this territory, circulating within it and talking to those who are part of it, as a way of overcoming abyssal thinking.

Notes 1 I am grateful to the interlocutors, particularly those in Maputo, Ilha, Goa, and Mumbai, who patiently helped me to understand the meanings of food. A special word of thanks to Boaventura de Sousa Santos for his support and constructive challenges during the research which forms the basis of this chapter, as well as the friends in these cities who helped me to understand the other meanings of flavours. This chapter was produced as part of two research projects developed at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra: “ALICE, Strange Mirrors, Unsuspected Lessons,” coordinated by Boaventura de Sousa Santos (alice.ces.uc.pt) and funded by the European Research Council Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community (FP/2007-2013)/ERC Grant Agreement no.  269807; “BLEND  – Desire, Miscegenation and Violence: the present and the past of the Portuguese Colonial War” (PTDC/CVI-ANT/6100/2014 – POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016859), financed by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) from national funds and co-financed by FEDER under the Operational Thematic Programme for Competitiveness and Innovation COMPETE 2020. The names of the individuals cited here are pseudonyms. 2 In  Goa, the Historical Archives of Goa, as well as the documents stored in the State Central Library in Panjim; in Maputo, the Mozambique Historical Archives. Responding to the challenge set by Ann Laura Stoler (2002), the archives were seen as sites for the production of knowledge on alterity and monuments in the construction and consolidation of colonial state knowledge. Questioning the construction of colonial knowledge and the hegemonic representations which it generates, and which are still accepted, requires studying the agency of the colonial archive itself as a producer of knowledge. 3 The global South as an ontological, political, and epistemological proposal is analyzed in detail in the introduction to this volume. 4 Whilst colonial dichotomies emphasize the colonizer-colonized opposition, in the new national contexts (with are emerging with independence), the main opposition becomes between elites and subalterns, questioning the nature of the “national project;” conversely, this is reinforced by narratives on “national cuisine” (Ferguson 1998: 600; Palmer 1998: 183). 5 Historically, the colonial territory of Mozambique maintained a dependent relationship with Goa until mid twentieth century (Meneses 2009a). 6 The social history of commodities aims to identify the long-term ebbs and flows that have an impact on major social contexts; biographies refer to more specific, private trajectories (Appadurai 1991: 36). 7 The colonial empires, particularly from the nineteenth century, were redesigning the geography of Indian Ocean contacts, favouring economic links between the metropoles and their colonial territories and discouraging pre-colonial connections.

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In several cases political independence, especially from the second half of the twentieth century onwards, overturned colonial borders and links, reformulating past connections. Food products reveal a long history of Indian Ocean contacts. The  list includes products from this basin or from other places which reached Indian Ocean cuisine via maritime and land routes. See the material stored in the Historical Archives of Goa (HAG), including both the Customs House Records and the Monsoon Books. The name of the latter is derived from the fact that the ships on which correspondence was sent had to wait for a favourable monsoon before departing. Almost all the books which contain correspondence with the capital of the Kingdom (Lisbon, Portugal) have the words “Monções do Reino” (MR—Monsoons of the Kingdom) on the spine. It should be noted that these books also contain information that refers to other parts of the empire such as Mozambique, Macau, and Timor. A large number of the Monsoon Books in Portugal have already been digitalized and can be consulted at the Torre do Tombo. During the almost 3 months I spent in the archives in Goa, I consulted countless Monsoon Books, including HAG—MR, 46-B; 49; 51-A; 164-C; 168-D; 169-B; 170-C; 172-B; 175; 177-B; 179-A; 180-A; 181-A; 183-B; 184-A; 185; 189; 190-B; 191-B; 192-A; and 198-D. HAG 9625 (corresponding to 1849–1950). Nachenim (Eleusine coracane) is a cereal of African origin widely used in both Mozambique and Goa. MR 177 (HAG). MR 191-B (HAG). HAG 6823 (corresponding to 1842). Prazos were Portuguese-leased crown estates. Although they were originally intended to be held by Portuguese subjects for three generations, through intermarriage they became African Portuguese or African Indian properties (Isaacman 1982). Meeting that took place on the Island of Mozambique in June 2002. Conversations that took place in Panjim, Goa, September–November 2015. See Rodrigues (2004: 46–48). Lunch with Maria Carvalho, April 2018. Conversation in Panjim, Goa, November 2015. The word badjia comes from the west coast of India, where it is used to describe a fritter/popular snack that has many varieties. Extracts from my fieldwork diary. The usual name for this type of street food is vada pav. In Goa, where the Portuguese presence has deeper roots, the term vada pao is common. It comprises the Maratha word “vada,” which means “batter,” and “pao,” which comes from the Portuguese “pão,” meaning “bread.” A political tendency that defends Hindu India, advocating the establishment of a Hindu state in India. A statement made by one of the assistants in the “vada pao” store in Goa, in February 2016. A meeting that took place in June 2016 in Maputo. Southern Rhodesia became independent in 1980 and changed its name to Zimbabwe. Following the exodus of the former Portuguese colonial population, the center of Maputo, the cement city, was occupied by the black population which had previously lived mainly on the outskirts of the city. The use of cutlery established a distance between the body and the food that was being eaten, a fact which, according to Elias (1994), was used to differentiate the civilized man from the savage.

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30 Translator’s note: The words italicized in the translation (but not in the original poem) refer to Mozambican food and drink: matapa, a dish made with cassava leaves and coconut milk; mucapata, a dish of rice, beans, and coconut milk; cacana, the leaves of a ground plant (Momordica balsamina) used to prepare a much appreciated sauce; mucuane, a similar dish to matapa; xiguinha, a dish of cassava, peanuts and coconut milk; badgias (bahjis); tocossado, fish baked in a chilli, mango and tomato sauce; wuputsu, xinoni (local beers); and sura (palm wine). 31 Green coconut (Horta, 1891: 244). 32 See Dalgado (1919). It should be noted that several of these dishes, such as achar pickle and samosas, are common to various Indian Ocean territories. 33 Meeting with S. Xarifa, March 2005, Island of Mozambique. 34 In the South African context, Nuttall and Michael (2000) distinguish between multiculturalism and the hybridism of creolization. The  former is based on a sense of containment that is different from creolization, which mixes the intimate and the public, including in the domain of the senses. However, the notion of Creole identity has no commonly agreed meaning. For Boswell (2017) the idea of Creole malaise is used to refer to the implications of dispossession and violence, which fragmented identities, economies, and solidarity. Among the many examples which this author provides, Creole identity as a project for harmonizing cultures does not allow for recognition of the impact of slavery in limiting access to resources.

References Alpers, Edward A. (2009), East Africa and the Indian Ocean. Princeton: Markus Wiener. Alpers, Edward A. (2014), The Indian Ocean in World History. New York: Oxford University Press. Appadurai, Arjun (1991), “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value”, in Arjun Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 3–63. Basu, Paul, and Coleman, Simon (2008),“Introduction: Migrant Worlds, Material Cultures”, Mobilities, 3(3), 313–330. Boswell, Rosabelle (2017), “Sensuous Stories in the Indian Ocean Islands”, Senses and Society, 12(2), 193–208. Botelho, Sebastião Xavier (1835), Estatística sobre os Domínios Portugueses na África Oriental. Lisbon: Tipografia de José Baptista Morando. Castanheda, Fernão Lopes de (1552–1561), História do Descobrimento e Conquista da India pelos Portugueses. Coimbra, 8 vol. Classen, Constance, Howes, David, and Synnott, Anthony (1994), Aroma: The  Cultural History of Smell. London, Routledge. Collingham, Lizzie (2006), Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors. London:Vintage Books. Couto, Mia (2003),“A Avó, a Cidade e o Semáforo”, in O Fio das Missangas. Lisbon: Caminho. Dalal, Kurush F. (2015), “Here’s Why the Cuisine of Maharashtra is a Cultural Hot Pot”, in  India Today, 21 July  2017, available at www.indiatoday.in/magazine/fooddrink/food/story/20170731-cuisine-of-maharashtra-mumbai-1025603-2017-07-21 (accessed December 2017). Dalgado, Sebastião Rodolfo, Monsenhor (1919), Glossário Luso-asiático. Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, 2 vol. Douglas, Mary (1991), Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concept of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge.

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Elias, Norberto (1994 [1939]), The Civilizing Process. Oxford: Blackwell. Ferguson, Priscilla P. (1998),“A Cultural Field in the Making: Gastronomy in 19th Century France”, American Journal of Sociology, 104(3), 597–641. Heldke, Lisa (1992), “Foodmaking as a Thoughtful Practice”, in Deane Curtin and Lisa Heldke (eds.), Cooking, Eating, Thinking: Transformative Philosophies of Food. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 203–229. Horta, Garcia da (1891[1563]), Colóquios dos Simples e Drogas da Índia (ed by Count of Ficalho). Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional. Ingold, Tim (2011), Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. London: Routledge. Isaacman, Allen (1982), Mozambique: The Africanization of a European Institution, the Zambesi Prazos (1750–1902). Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Korsmeyer, Carolyn (1999), Making Sense of Taste: Food and Philosophy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Lacerda, Francisco Gavicho (1929), Figuras e Episódios da Zambézia. Lisbon: Livraria Rodrigues. Lambek, Michael (2002), The Weight of the Past: Living with history in Mahajanga, Madagascar. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Laporte, Dominique (2000), History of Shit. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Lee, Samuel (1829), The Travels of Ibn Batuta, translated from the abridged Arabic manuscript copies, preserved in the Public Library of Cambridge. London: Oriental Translation Committee. Leong-Salobir, Cecilia Y., Ray, Krishnendu, and Rohel, Jaclyn (2016), “Introducing a Special Issue on Rescuing Taste from the Nation: Oceans, Borders, and Culinary Flows”, Gastronomica:The Journal of Food and Culture, 16(1), 9–15. Meneses, Maria Paula (2009a), “Food, Recipes and Commodities of Empires: Mozambique in the Indian Ocean Network”, Oficina do CES, 335. Meneses, Maria Paula (2009b),“Justiça Cognitiva”, in António Cattani et al. (eds.), Dicionário Internacional da Outra Economia. Coimbra: Almedina, 231–236. Meneses, Maria Paula (2013), “Para Ampliar as Epistemologias do Sul:Verbalizando sabores e revelando lutas”, Configurações, 12, 13–27. Meneses, Maria Paula (2016), “Ampliando las epistemologías del sur a partir de los sabores: Diálogos desde los saberes de las mujeres de Mozambique”, [online] Revista Andaluza de Antropología, 10, 10–28. Meneses, Maria Paula (2018), “Cocina Nacional, Procesos Identitários y Retos de Soberanía: Las recetas culinarias construyendo Mozambique”, Debates Insubmissos, 1(2), 7–32. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1992  [1945]), The  Phenomenology of Perception. New  York: Routledge. Nuttall, Sarah, and Michael, Cheryl-Ann (2000), “Imagining the Present”, in Sarah Nuttall and Cheryl-Ann Michael (eds.), Senses of Culture: South African Culture Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1–23. Palmer, Catherine (1998), “From Theory to Practice: Experiencing the Nation in Everyday Life”, Journal of Material Culture, 3(2), 175–199. Pratt, Marie-Louise (1992), Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. New  York: Routledge. Rodrigues, Maria de Lourdes Bravo da Costa (2004), Tasty Goan Morsels:Food, Ingredients and Preparation. Goa: L. & L.

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Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2007), “Beyond Abyssal Thinking: From Global Lines to Ecologies of Knowledges”, Review, 30(1), 45–89. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2014), Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide. New York: Routledge. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2017), Manifesto Antipteridófitas. Rio de Janeiro: Confraria do Vento. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2018), The End of the Cognitive Empire: The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Sheriff, Abdul (1987), Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar: Integration of an East African Commercial Empire into the World Economy, 1770–1873. London: James Currey. Stoler, Ann Laura (2002), “Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance”, Archival Science, 2, 87–109. Subrahmanyam, Sanjay (2011), Explorations in Connected History: From the Tagus to the Ganges. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vergès, Françoise (2006), “Let’s Cook”, in Sarah Nuttall (ed.), Beautiful/Ugly: Diaspora Aesthetics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 241–256. Wilson, Benjamim (2015), “Badjia Domina Ruas e Avenidas da Cidade”, Jornal Domingo, 2 May 2015, available at www.jornaldomingo.co.mz/index.php/nacional/5330-badjiadomina-ruas-e-avenidas-da-cidade (accessed May 2016).

Part IV

Decolonizing Knowledge The Multiple Challenges

11 THE RECOLONIZATION OF THE INDIAN MIND Peter Ronald deSouza

Introduction In  the Sir Ashutosh Memorial Lecture titled “Swaraj in Ideas,” delivered in 1931, the eminent Indian philosopher KC Bhattacharya lamented the impact on India of the colonial encounter with Europe. He was deeply concerned by two consequences. The first he referred to as the enslavement of the mind, which, he believed, was worse than political subjection since the latter only meant restraint on the “outer life of the people,” whereas in the case of the mind “slavery begins when one ceases to feel the evil and it deepens when the evil is accepted as a good.” The second harmful consequence for him was the replacement of the real mind by the shadow mind, “that functions like a real mind except in the manner of genuine creativeness” (Bhattacharya 1954: 2–4). Reading the lecture, some years ago, left me anxious, angry, and curious. I was anxious to know whether the process of enslavement had ended, now that we were independent, or whether it still continued and, if it did, what would resistance to enslavement look like—a self-conscious nativism, a deliberate eclecticism, or a constructed cosmopolitanism? I was also angry because the long period of colonialism made me feel disconnected from the intellectual life of India that is plural, that has many schools of thought in it, that is rich in its epic literature, and that has a vibrant folk tradition and dissenting culture. This intellectual repertoire had been diminished by colonialism and, therefore, returning, recovering, and reconstructing it to have it speak to today’s concerns, and then arguing for it within the academy was proving to be a challenge fraught with political pitfalls. But I also carry some ambivalence toward the historical encounter since I recognize the emancipatory current and possibilities that it has produced. The abolition of Sati, a practice where widows were

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expected to immolate themselves on the funeral pyre of their dead husbands, which was done 200 years before Bentinck abolished it in British India,1 and the introduction of the Common civil code that gave women equal rights to property, were obvious examples. Coupled with such anxiety and anger was a third emotion, curiosity. I was curious to investigate the social and historical nature of the processes that had brought us to such a pass. Did they still persist today, and do they do so in the same form, or had they actually assumed a different form with different instruments of domination having emerged in a new and more subtle, but more perfidious, neo-colonial relationship? If this was the intellectual concern in India, the struggle and yearning for freedom of the mind, let me look for similar anxieties expressed elsewhere in the colonized world. This paper has three sections. I will begin with a brief discussion of concerns expressed by thinkers in other regions of the colonized south. I will then look at attempts at decolonization in India, and finally, at somewhat greater length, I will examine the situation in India today.

Colonization of the Mind Franz Fanon saw the colonial relationship as producing the false belief that concepts travelled to other parts of the world, from Europe to outside Europe, as if they were baggage free, not carrying the cultural markers of their place of historical origin. The myth promoted was that the conceptual schemas of Europe, their normative goals, were valid for the whole world. By buying into them, we, the colonized people, developed an idiom and a vocabulary that was alien to us since we either abandoned our own schema or allowed it to atrophy. Fanon, with the anguish of a victim who has to encounter the loss of self-worth by colonialism, wrote: Out of the blackest part of my soul, across the zebra striping of my mind, surges this desire to be suddenly white. I wish to be acknowledged not as black but as white. Now […] who but a white woman can do this for me? By loving me she proves I am worthy of white love. I am loved like a white man. I am a white man. […] I marry white culture, white beauty, white whiteness. When my restless hands caress those white breasts, they grasp white civilization and dignity and make them mine. (Fanon 1967: 63) In a similar vein, expressing a similar angst, Aimé Césaire in his classic study, Discourse on Colonialism (1972), also reflected on this theme when he argued that the system of ideas that accompanied colonialism constructed the non-West as primitive, as the inferior other, and as a consequence, placed on Europe the

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burden of bringing civilization, and all its accoutrements, to this inferior world. By giving these inferior peoples a conceptual language, and by training them in the cultural practices that were a hallmark of civilized peoples, Europe was able to create images of itself in other regions of the world. This was the white man’s burden that drove the colonial encounter. Tristao de Braganza Cunha regarded as the father of the anticolonial struggle against Portuguese colonialism in Goa, saw this encounter with Europe as leading to the Denationalization of Goans. In the pamphlet of the same title, he argued that systematic colonial state policy, imposed through various coercive means, including the Inquisition, which was also visited on Goa, led to the erasure of the cultural memory of Goans and thereby to their cultural amnesia (Cunha 1961). This disconnect was a huge loss since it closed off an engagement with aesthetics, ethics, logic, and poetics that were such a rich part of the civilization landscape of India. For him, a people who had lost connection with their intellectual and cultural heritage were a people that had become denationalized. The Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o, in his Decolonising the Mind, describes the impact of the colonial educational system and curricula on the native mind. He narrates the story of how African students who had studied English Literature—the whole pantheon of British greats—“had been able to recognize some characters of Jane Austen’s novels in their own African villages” (1986: 91). Was Thiong’o raising the possibility that this very English novelist, who we were told had confined herself to describing the world of the English landed gentry was also, in fact, describing characters with universal human traits who, shorn of the costumes of the English landed class, were discernible to the African student?2 For Thiong’o, the danger of the colonial system of education lay in its control over perception, over the ways by which those who had been subject to its spell saw the world. A European perspective became the lens through which they made sense of the world. Another thinker, the Palestinian philosopher and literary theoretician Edward Said, in a powerful critique of anthropology’s service to the colonial powers, wrote that: […] to be colonized is potentially to be a great many different but inferior (emphasis mine) things, in many different places at many different times. […] Colonialism produced […] a dreadful secondariness of people who, in V. S. Naipaul’s derisive characterization, are condemned to use a telephone, never to invent it. (Said 2000 295) The themes of inferiorization, of only wanting to imitate the West, and of cultural erasure of native traditions, are themes that connect much of the writing by thinkers from across the colonized world. A new, but important dimension is, however, introduced into the discussion by Albert Memmi, the Tunisian writer, in his semi-autobiographical novel, The  Pillar of Salt (1992). His central character, Benillouche believed that by

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rejecting his different identities, i.e., distancing himself from his Arab, African, and Tunisian-Jewish heritage, he would be better equipped to move ahead in the world, invested deeply in mastering the curricula and texts that were a part of the uniform French educational system. If distancing himself from his intellectual and cultural world was what was required to excel, Benillouche was prepared for this sacrifice. He worked very hard in mastering the seminal texts and the philosophical systems of the Western Academy. However, when the conflict of World War II in Europe came to his country, when the world of his birth came into conflict with the world of his learning, all his achievements in the world of scholarship were not enough to protect him from the bigotry and bias of the French colonial authorities that followed the coming of the Nazis. European philosophy and philosophers deserted him when he needed them most. And when they were called upon to stand up for him—for equality, liberty, and fraternity—they preferred to remain silent in the face of Nazi power. The  frailty of this European intellectual world, from Descartes to Mill, to protect the colonized subject from the tyranny of the colonial state, and the discovery that European intellectuals, or rather intellectuals who reside in the colonial metropolis, lead a split existence, talking ethics, but practicing prudence in the face of tyrannical power, is something the post-colonial society needs to recognize. This “betrayal” by European philosophy and philosophers which recurs in the many stories of slavery (some of the authors of the Bill of Rights of the American Constitution were slave owners), colonialism ( James Mill, the Utilitarian philosopher, was Head of India House in London), exclusion, and even affiliation with Nazism (as Heidegger), where the commitment to the pursuit of truth is ceded to rationalizing power, is a paradox that needs to be probed beyond the knowledge/power paradigm of Foucault (1984). Why is Western philosophy so schizophrenic, so vocal when in the classroom, but so silent when in the colonial streets? This is not to imply hypocrisy on the part of the intellectual class, not a charge as Benda (1955) made of the treason of the intellectuals, but to point to a paradox at the heart of their existence. A point comes in the pursuit of truth when the rationalization of that which becomes a dominant mode of being, when the pursuit of truth which leads to a daily protest, if not  daily rebellion, becomes too unsettling, and therefore rationalization gets preferred among the options and becomes naturalized. This also happens to intellectuals in the global South. Struggling with this paradox of critiquing the world, but not doing much to change it remains an important part of the project of the decolonization of minds. What I have sought to do in this brief, but illustrative, sketch is to draw out the key arguments made by the thinkers mentioned and then to see whether these remain valid for the contemporary post-colonial world. It was a brief tour through the intellectual landscapes of worlds colonized by the British, French, and Portuguese. The colonial project in each world was to create little Europes

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in distant lands. It  succeeded fully in many countries, look at Australia and Argentina, and partially in others, producing a comprador elite that served the colonial project. The  brief survey summarizes the many specific responses that have been given to the question of what did colonialism do to the native mind. It enslaved the native mind, making it believe that what had emerged in the colonial encounter was good. It  produced a shadow mind whose creativeness was eroded and which, unknown to itself, adopted an intellectual life that was marked by imitation and mimicry. It  led to an erasure of cultural memory, producing disconnect with a millennia old intellectual and cultural life. It gave the impression (mistaken) that the concepts that inhabited the European intellectual universe, particularly those that had their origin in the Enlightenment, were context free and had universal validity. It made the colonized people feel that their cultures were inferior and that abandoning them, and adopting the cultural practices of the colonizer, was therefore the way to go if one wanted to be respectable and accepted as civilized. If colonialism had these effects on the mind, how was decolonization of the mind to be effected?

Decolonization of the Mind The extent of such colonization, I am not sure, was widely recognized by those who should have known better. Because it created a new language of representation, replacing earlier languages, its conceptual vocabulary and meaning systems began to dominate thinking in the post-colonial world. The task of exorcizing the many ways in which the feeling of inferiority had seeped into our new cognitive world, of restoring memory and connection with a native cultural landscape, an exercise that also met the conditions of democratic politics, and finally the task of building alternative cosmologies rid of the orientalism that pervades the dominant discourse, in the humanities and social sciences today, is an enormous one. We have still to forge the analytical tools for this decolonization of the mind. While there has been some pushback in the Spanish and Portuguese speaking world where various scholars have initiated an intellectual exercise of building an “epistemology of the South” (Santos 2014), such a concerted and sustained effort has not emerged in the Anglophone world. In mounting their critique by introducing ideas such as “colonial difference” (Mignolo 2002), “transmodernity”  (Dussel 2013), “coloniality of power” (Quijano 2000), or “ecology of knowledges” (Santos 2014), they have expanded the discussion of how to decolonize the mind. I do not  wish to go into the nuances of this debate in this Latin world, because it is complex and rich, but I find some of the insights that are offered, such as the one by Boaventura de Sousa Santos on looking at “ignorance” differently, as playful and with considerable interpretative potential. This seems the way to go.

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The ecology of knowledges is founded on the idea that there is no ignorance or knowledge in general; every kind of ignorance ignores a certain kind of knowledge and every kind of knowledge triumphs over a certain kind of ignorance. Learning some kinds of knowledges may imply forgetting others and ultimately ignoring them. In other words, concerning the ecology of knowledges, ignorance is not necessarily the starting point; it may well be the point of arrival. That is why throughout every stage of the ecology of knowledges, it is crucial to ask if what is learnt is valuable, or should be forgotten or not  learnt. Ignorance is merely a discredited form of being and making when what has been learnt is more valuable than what is being forgotten. The utopia of inter-knowledge is learning other knowledges without forgetting one’s own. (Santos 2012a: 57) The vibrant debate emerging in the Latin world needs imitation in the intellectual theatre of South Asia, and the occasional interventions by Ashis Nandy, Gopal Guru, Partha Chatterji, Sudipta Kaviraj, Shiv Vishwanathan, Dipesh Chakrabarty, and others, need to be sustained at the level of epistemology. The  beachheads established by these interventions need considerable expansion. This has not happened. As a consequence, there is, unfortunately, a neocolonial takeover of the post-colonial knowledge space by the knowledge producing centers of the metropolis. I shall, at this point, however, step back from these contemporary excursions and return to the intellectual history of India. The discomfort with this colonial encounter with Europe produced in India a range of responses from glorifying Indian tradition—a sort of nativism—to rejecting the tradition because it was gross—embracing orientalism—, to trying to take what was best in both and attempting a fusion of forms—eclecticism (Parekh 1999). If these different responses were to be organized around broad clusters, then we can possibly identify three clusters. The first, best exemplified by the writings of Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi, sought to build an alternative knowledge system that was organically linked to the culture and the needs of our society. This  cluster was closest to the “enslavement of minds” thesis of KC Bhattacharya. It therefore attempted to break free of such enslavement by constructing a comprehensive alternative. I shall discuss Tagore’s view on an Indian university in more detail later. The  second cluster, in contrast, does not  recognize or appreciate the full extent of such enslavement. It buys into the promise of the Enlightenment ideals and therefore sees its task as requiring merely the tweaking of the knowledge system, introduced by the colonial state, to align it better with the national goals of development. This cluster accepts the claim that the content produced by these knowledge practices is neutral because it follows the rigorous protocols of science, and hence, its politics lay in the system and not in the content produced. Hence, all that was required of the post-colonial state was to re-orient

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and re-direct the system to meet the goals of a post-colonial society. This epistemic innocence, where the prejudices embedded in concepts, i.e., the baggage they carry with respect to the value biases of the societies in which they have emerged is not even noticed. It is an innocence that is the most widespread in independent India. It underlies our educational policies, institutions, and initiatives. National curricula, accompanied by a frenetic exercise of building the temples of modern India, i.e., institutes of technology and modern universities, using the templates of the North to do so, are considered adequate initiatives to decolonize the mind. In  other words, our policy makers and educational bureaucrats, by pushing this educational policy frame developed by the North for their universities, have become accomplices in the further colonialization of our minds. The best statement of this is the Pitroda led National Knowledge Commission reports.3 The third cluster takes on a more rejectionist position with respect to the curricula that has been prepared in the global North and seeks to develop alternative curricula in the humanities and the social sciences (Alvares 2001). Unfortunately, because of the power of the neo-colonial frame, it has little presence in the educational landscape in India today. The reasons for this weakness are both a reflection of the continuing power over the mind of the Northern vision and also of the inability of the alternative to attract both intellectual and financial support. The difference between the three clusters depends on their recognition of the “extent” of the colonization of the mind that has taken place. It  is this recognition that underwrites the validity of the package of policies, curricula, and institutions that have been initiated to decolonize it. Discussing each of these three clusters is a lengthy exercise for which I do not have the space here. I have mentioned them, however, primarily to present to other researchers the understanding, in each cluster, of the “extent” to which the mind has been colonized, and therefore of the adequacy of the initiatives taken to decolonize it. I shall limit myself, in this chapter, to only a brief presentation of Tagore’s views on education. Tagore was severely critical of the model of the university imposed by the colonial system in India and felt that an alternative institution was needed to fully align the educational system with a dynamic and creative Indian culture so that it could achieve national aspirations. Vishva Bharati was the university he set up as a result of such an understanding, and this he linked with the pre-university education process in the town of Shantiniketan which became his educational complex. Tagore saw the colonial encounter in the following terms: The European culture has come to us not only with its own knowledge but with its velocity. Though our assimilation of it is imperfect and the consequent aberrations numerous, still it is rousing our intellectual life

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from its inertia of formal habits into glowing consciousness by the very contradiction it offers to our own mental traditions. What I object to is the artificial arrangement by which this foreign education tends to occupy all the space of our national mind and thus kills, or hampers, the great opportunity for the creation of a new thought power by a new combination of truths. It is this which makes me urge that all the elements in our own culture have to be strengthened, not to resist the Western culture, but truly to accept and assimilate it and use it for our food and not as our burden; to get mastery over this culture, and not live at its outskirts as the hewers of texts and the drawers of book-learning. (Tagore 1996: 486) Being a man of literature, Tagore was a master of the metaphor which he used to great effect in his polemics against the colonial system of education. An alien education, he believed, left the colonized people as “mental cripples,” and therefore it was necessary to create both a curricula and teachers who would teach in the languages of India. Language, for him, was “not like an umbrella or an overcoat, that can be borrowed by unconscious or deliberate mistake; it is like the living skin itself ” (Tagore 1996: 564). For Tagore, the colonial educational system trained us not to “produce but to borrow” (1996: 562). This he sought to overcome at Vishva Bharati. This university, in existence for several decades since its setting up in 1921, has produced many illustrious alumni such as Amartya Sen, Mahasweta Devi, and Satyajit Ray. The time has perhaps come for an academic audit of its working to see the success of the decolonization exercise. We need to know what has worked, and what has failed to work, and why. My objective in mentioning these three clusters is to draw attention to the challenge of the decolonization exercise. The  first cluster produced experiments such as Visva Bharati, which has had limited success and has now, as the post-colonial state asserts its own inner logic and its own dynamics of power, begun to face a series of contradictions. Are these contradictions because Vishva Bharati is a lone institution, in a sea of institutions that have only marginally departed from the colonial road map for such institutions, and therefore it does not  have the critical mass to resist the domination even now  after political colonialism has ended? Or is it because the political sociology of institutions, particularly in India, soon begins to assert itself as people jockey for power and thereby overwhelm the idealism that marked the founding of the institution, reducing it to the feeble imagination of its current operators? Or is it that the post-colonial state, in its zest to standardize practices of educational delivery and maintain central control, has debilitated the institution irreversibly by giving it funds, but taking away its soul? The second cluster, which adopted an incremental approach of merely tweaking the inherited structure of education and knowledge production, achieved little by way of breaking free from the enslavement of the mind and has, in

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fact, created the ground for a subsequent recolonization. Is this because the paradigm of knowledge creation and dissemination, articulated by the colonial regime, is essentially valid, with all other competing paradigms being deemed unsustainable? The global picture seems to give credence to this argument, as educational systems across the world adapt and adopt the knowledge systems of the global North. The third cluster, which attempts a radical alternative, has made little headway in India either because the institutional power against it was too massive, what Edward Said (1986: 52) refers to as a “wealthy system of interlocking informational and academic resources,” or because it was too undeveloped to attract supporters. These are complex questions which will need to be investigated by a longer study. Irrespective of the dismal findings of the survey that the knowledge systems of the North have conquered knowledge spaces across the global South, this does not detract from the fact that minds in the South (and here it is useful to see the South as a metaphor where even in the geographical North there is a South) have been colonized. The preceding sections were intended merely to serve as a preface to the discussion that will now follow on the recolonization of the Indian mind. Let me now briefly list ways in which this process can be encouraged. There are five general strategies that can be adopted which I can label as: (i) incrementalist, (ii) subaltern, (iii) nativist, (iv) inspired eclectic, and (v) the counter discourse. I shall briefly comment on each. In  the first, the incrementalist strategy of resistance, one engages with the Northern discourse and looks in it for inconsistencies, ambivalences, and inconvenient facts. Through this search one can seed the basis for alternative readings, expose the biases and contradictions of the dominant frame, and provide the grounds for arguing for different cosmologies. The political sociologist Rudolph (2005) labeled these biases of the North as the “imperialism of categories.” She complained that their methodological training in the North left students quite unprepared for the experiences of data collection in the alien field of South India. She  wondered “to what extent were the tool kits we brought with us from the United States capable of bridging differences between civilizations, cultures, and world-views between the Western observer and the non-Western observed?” Since concepts can be capacious, infiltration, adaptation, and modification may, in principle, be possible. The task before us is to build up the “inconvenient facts” that these concepts from the North have to confront. This  involves hard labor. Unfortunately, our social science culture in India expects us only to prove the theories of the North. This attitude must change. The second, the subaltern strategy, has worked well and has now become the commonplace of history writing in many locations of the South. Such history writing is important because the victors write history, and this must be countered such that the colonialists are held to account and their historical accounts besieged by alternative and parallel stories.

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What clearly is left out of this un-historical  [elitist] historiography is the politics of the people. For parallel to the domain of elite politics there existed throughout the colonial period another domain of Indian politics in which the principal actors were not the dominant group of the indigenous society or the colonial authorities, but the subaltern classes and groups constituting the mass of the laboring population and intermediate strata in town and country—that is, the people. This was an autonomous domain, for it neither originated from elite politics nor did its existence depend on the latter. (Guha 1988: 37–38; emphasis in the original) The  third, the nativist approach, is politically very delicate since it can lead both to a vulgar nationalism as also to an insightful philosophical reading of native texts. The vulgar nativism is best demonstrated by the statement made by Dinanath Batra after he met the Minister of Human Resources Development in June 2014, where he demanded the rewriting of history text books to get the “balance back” since the current ones “are the work of Marx and Macaulay’s sons (sic). The books are not rooted to the culture of the land.”4 The aim of his movement is to bring about an Indianization of education and to remove the vestiges of colonialism. While one may, on a first reading, seem similar in sentiment to the argument that I am making on decolonization, a second reading reveals that it is actually a movement to glorify a sectarian reading of the past, erasing other histories and contributions such as those of the encounter with Islam. The Indian past is a past of conquests, domination, achievements, and suppressions, and can be regarded as a palimpsest in which many histories are written and not completely erased and all of these, with their blood and glory, must be recovered.5 In contrast to this crass nativism is the brilliance of Ramanujan (1989), whose essay “Is there an Indian way of Thinking?” sets out arguments of other universals which are emerging from the Indian intellectual landscape where time and space also play a part in their construction. The fourth strategy, inspired eclecticism, is best demonstrated by the essays of Edward Said, a reference on how one can live a hybrid existence with a foot in each civilization zone and still lead a fertile intellectual life. I call this an “inspired eclecticism” because it takes from everywhere and submits that which it takes to critical scrutiny, and then uses what it is taken in a new and inspired way, revealing aspects of the human condition that it has intuitively sensed. It  does so without falling prey to the dominant frameworks of knowledge/ power. Said sees: one of the major roles for the intellectual in the public sphere is to function as a kind of public memory; to recall what is forgotten or ignored; to connect and contextualize and to generalize from what appear to be fixed “truths,” […] the isolated story, and connect them to the larger processes

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which might have produced the situation that we’re talking about  […] it falls to the intellectual to make the connections that are otherwise hidden. (Said 2000: 503) There is much work for the intellectual in the global South to do. Arindam Chakrabarti is up to the challenge, and his work is an embodiment of such inspired eclecticism. In  the recent book that he has co-edited with Ralph Weber, Comparative Philosophy without Borders (2015), he stages a set of insightful conversations between different philosophical systems from both the North and the South. It is this seamless travel across intellectual systems, driven by philosophical questions such as “how do we read other’s feelings” or “how can one represent another,” that constitutes the challenge because such travel requires one to get by border controls and ensuring that one’s philosophical documents are in epistemic order. The fifth, the counter-discourse, refers to the work of the scholars from the Latin world mentioned earlier. They have progressed a considerable distance in laying out the road for the epistemology of the South. They have been aided by Indian scholars, also mentioned earlier, but these have established only the beachheads and have not produced the collective effort required to re-occupy the space currently dominated by a social science and humanities discourse from the North, which can be seen in the curricula, vocabulary, and strategies of representation of our world that prevail in social sciences in India. The counter-discourse has to fight on many fronts. It has to avoid the pitfalls of a vulgar nativism. It has to endorse the insights of an inspired eclecticism. It has to accommodate the interpretations coming from incrementalism. It  has to then put all these together to offer readings that are different from those coming from the North, that are richer in their understandings of social processes, and that also speak to our contemporary concerns. This is what the struggle to decolonize the mind involves. The challenge is to learn how to and acquire the habit of “infiltrating, adapting, and modifying concepts” that seem to work and to recognize that such adaptation does not produce co-option by the knowledge/power frameworks of the North. While these old battles of the mind are being waged, a new front has opened up in recent years. If the earlier battles were about the inferior culture and civilization of the colonial subject, the new battle is about the inferior developmental path that the newly independent nation has chosen. If the earlier relationship of domination was to establish the superiority of colonialism, the new relationship is to establish the superiority of the ways of global capital. In the present globalized world, the interests of global capital enter and take over the production of knowledge, the control of perception, and the direction of policy discussions in the public sphere. The logic of the long prelude of this paper has been to bring the discussion to this point where I can describe the processes of the new recolonization of the Indian mind. There are two parts to

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these processes: (i) to establish the inferiority of contending pathways and (ii) to do so by taking over the public policy spaces that are crucial to the formulation of futures for our countries.

Recolonization of the Mind Let me begin my case with three illustrations. In  an interesting article from 2014 titled Left out of the Rankings,6 Professor Bhaskar Ramamurthi, director of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, challenged the international methodology used to rank universities. His argument was that certain parameters are included in the methodology, while others, which we may consider valuable for our national development, were excluded. How were such parameters chosen and by whom, and according to which set of guidelines? Who was to determine which parameters were to be included and which excluded? The process so far is fairly opaque, yet its results are treated as objective and receive global validation. Any discussion of ranking must, therefore, begin with an examination of the grounds for the parameters used. We need to examine whether they reveal a perspective bias. Why are some parameters, which we consider relevant, missing from the evaluation matrix? Is this methodology of ranking institutions reflective of the global politics of knowledge production? Many questions that still await answers. To get into an IIT in India, for example, candidates must clear the JEE examination.7 This is a very difficult examination where several hundred thousand students spend many years preparing to compete for a few thousand seats. It is an egalitarian exercise and does not depend on the candidates’ social power or family wealth. In contrast, not all candidates who get into USA Ivy League (IL) institutions get in on high SAT8 scores. They must be able to pay for the education (rely on a bank loan or family wealth) and also have excellent references. The matrix for admission at an IL gives weightage to SAT scores (excellence), funding ability (wealth), social status (power), and capacity to promote the institution’s interests (networks).9 If a 5-year data set was available, on applications and admissions to IL institutions, it would show the trend discussed above, of proportionate weightage given to excellence, wealth, power, and social network. In contrast, since the IITs only value JEE scores, are the IITs superior and more egalitarian? Further, if a candidate wants to challenge the admission process in India, the JEE ranking, she can apply under the Right to Information law for details of who was admitted and under what criteria. I wonder if such an application can be made at an IL institution or would one come up against a wall of the right of privacy. The policy of reservations is another important parameter that must be brought into any ranking exercise. Surely normative issues, such as these, should be key elements of any ranking exercise especially since they reward excellence, provide access, see education as a public good, and link the benefits of education to the public interest (UNESCO 2015).

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But the Indian public discourse, among both policy planners and academics, does not  raise these counter issues on the relevance of the parameters. For example, there is an interesting discussion on higher education as a “public good” in South Africa and Brazil, which determines the funding and structure of educational institutions. Does the policy of treating higher education as a “public good” enter the ranking methodology? And why is it not debated at this level by the policy and academic community in India? I suspect because our minds have been re-colonized by the neo-liberal discourse whose view of the world is regarded as the best and only view. Not only is there an enslavement of our policy thinking, but the global ranking index also produces a sense of inferiority about Indian institutions. Professor Ramamurthi’s article was to challenge such perception. While I have singled out this case as an illustration, I want it to lead us to the larger point of how frameworks of evaluation are constructed by ignoring other needs and value premises such as, in this case, education for citizenship. The  community college movement in the USA, which does not  enter these rankings, has brought access and opportunity for self-development to large numbers of the disadvantaged and yet is not on the radar of “best universities.” Further, these universities ranked high on the global rankings index serve as models for policy makers across the global South who try and re-work their policy frames to push public university education in that direction, i.e., away from the idea of a public good and toward the idea of a private good. These highly ranked global universities, as a result of such ranking, get easy access to policy makers across India and therefore not only redirect policy in all matters from health to extractive industries, but also get access to primary data in the government’s records that national knowledge institutions find hard to access. This  can be seen in the increasing infiltration, the second illustration, by the global consultancy firms of our policy making world. For example, a major international consultancy group found a presence as members in the just dissolved Planning Commission and in the Reserve Bank of India through its ex-members. If we take this as a clue to infiltration, the Trojan horse, and try and find out the number of All India Civil Service members who have joined global consultancy firms after taking premature retirement, we would indeed be very surprised. From serving the nation to serving global capital, it appears, does not seem a big step. It would be interesting to explore how many consultancy contracts have been given to these global consultancy firms by Ministries who have sought advice on policy, on the development road to be traversed, especially Ministries dealing with natural resources and extractive industries, at the levels of both the state and union governments. The defense given by the Ministries in awarding the contracts to firms in which they have ex-colleagues is that the consultancy firms are often the lowest bidders when tenders are called for. They have been selected in fair competition. Anecdotal evidence, however, suggests that very often such firms do

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not charge for the professional time of their highly paid staff in their quotations and, in their strategic calculus, are prepared to underwrite high “cost to company” human resources so that they can get access to the ministry, to its personnel, and its data archives. This is the asset they seek. This is the tangible capital (ministry data) and the intangible capital (contacts) they acquire which become very valuable when they service their private clients, or when they service other countries with whom India competes. In  these cases, their charges are very high, and these private clients are willing to pay high rates for their professional time since they are also now getting valuable information. If the number of retired senior civil service members, who become partners in these global consultancies after retirement, and the number of consultancy contracts given to global firms is documented, we would be in for a surprise. Unfortunately, such data are not available because it has not yet been researched. I am not suggesting mala-fide by any individuals (this is easy to deal with), but wish primarily to draw attention to something more worrisome; the close association of the policy community with these firms who serve the interests of global capital. With their reports, policy briefs, analytical templates, seminars, and foreign study tours, they produce in our policy makers a way of seeing, a set of beliefs on how to grow our economy. This serves the interests of global capital. The predatory forces which have grown in the last decades, within and outside India, are a measure of the success of this recolonization of the policy mind. The consultancy firms are the Trojan horse of global capital. They too have colonized our policy space. The high and increasing levels of power of individuals and firms that have been the consequence of such policy thinking have not just weakened the ability, and willingness, of states to reduce inequality, but also invisibilized the problems of poverty and destitution that were so much a part of policy thinking in India. The drought of 2016 which has affected millions of people in India is an example of the recolonization of our thinking, where, instead of treating this as the emergency it is, the pre-occupation among policy makers is to attract investors and less with relieving rural distress. The third example is the training programmes, offered by the different training academies, for All India Civil Service officers at different levels of seniority. I am a member of the Programme Management Committee of the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, the institution which trains the senior civil servants of India, the steel frame of the state, where a discussion is going on about the course content, pedagogy, and institutional collaboration with global universities in the training programme. While I do not  wish to elaborate on the internal discussions we have had, I can, however, mention my surprise when I learnt that one of the leading universities in the USA offered their professional time gratis for the training. I was puzzled by such altruism since it is not available for students who pay on an average USD 55,000 per year to private universities in tuition. What then is the payoff? It can only be long

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term influence over our policy making. Again it would be a valuable empirical exercise to document the number of such collaborations with leading northern private universities in the training programmes of our All India Civil Service Officers. If the production of inferiority was the message of the first example, and the production of domination by global capital the message of the second example, it is the recolonization of policy institutions by the allies of global capital which is the message of the third. The three illustrations given here may seem to be isolated cases, but this is not so. Although they may appear random cases, they are, in fact, connected events and should be seen as illustrations of the deeper reality of global capital which has taken over our epistemic and policy spaces. Similar to the situation during the colonial period where knowledge institutions served the interests of the colonial regime, the knowledge institutions and agencies promote in India today the interests of global capital and do so in subtle and devious ways. They infiltrate our minds and dominate our ways of seeing. They control our public discourse on which path is to be followed as we work toward better futures. This dominant neo-liberal perspective which has established itself in India tells us how to organize our world, produce and distribute our wealth, and deploy the forces of the state such as the planning system, the regulation system, the judiciary, police, and the university. Since the 2014 General Elections in India, this neo-liberal perspective has gained immense traction. A scholar who tracks key words in the print media pointed out this domination to me. He  referred to the debate on “policy paralysis” that had preceded the election and that had gained widespread buy in, making it a “given” in our public discourse. We all believed there was “policy paralysis.” He pointed out to me that this word always referred to policies that were favorable to the corporate sector, government policies that were considered to be stuck because of some public interest issue, such reduction in the public subsidies on fertilizer or easier environmental clearances for extractive industries, etc. In these debates, “policy paralysis,” he suggested, never referred to policies on how to improve government schools, or government hospitals, or credit to indebted small farmers.10 Another example of such domination is the discussion in the newspapers on the welfare policies followed by the previous UPA government which, it is held, produced beneficiaries who became the grave diggers of the very same government who benefitted them.11 People, it is argued, do not want hand-outs, but want the economic opportunities that liberalization would allegedly bring. This idea too has now gained wide currency in the media. If all this sounds somewhat in the air that there are some malevolent institutions that serve as the praetorian guard of global capital, let me give this argument a concrete form and list the institutions who have so much power today and who determine what the dominant development argument should be. They are the investment banks, the large global consultancies, the multilateral

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financial institutions, the credit ratings agencies who determine the creditworthiness of a country and of a company—thereby enabling them to borrow from the financial markets—and of course the World Economic Forum at Davos. These ratings guide the international flow of financial capital which in turn determines the investment decisions of multi-national companies. Financial planners in government have many sleepless nights worrying about such ratings. If the ratings drop, then hundreds of millions of dollars flow out of the country, which, in turn, has a huge impact on the value of the currency. It is Wall Street and not Washington which runs the world. These core institutions of global capital are helped by the university, the think tanks, the planning boards, and the media corporation. Together, they set the argument of what is to be done. They punish anyone who deviates from the line that they have set out with a threatened downgrade or a damaging report on a country’s future. The day the Indian Parliament passed the Food Security Act, its currency, the rupee, lost 12% plus of its value against the dollar because of the concern that this would place an increased, and unjustifiable, burden on public finances. That it would give some food security to a few hundred million poor (nutrition deficiency and hunger is a big problem in India) was of little consequence to global capital. This argument, that we cannot afford a food security bill, is now, after the 2014 General Election, being made boldly in the public discourse with calls being made for its reversal. It is an illustration of the domination, of both the global public mind and the national public mind, of the new colonizers of the mind in India. The new policy paradigm that is being aggressively argued for aims to produce a USA in India, not a Sweden or a Canada, just as in the earlier period the aim was to produce a Europe in India. The counter-discourse, by scholars such as Drèze and Sen (2013) and Stiglitz (2014), is losing its constituency, the reasons for which we must explore in terms of the sociology and political economy of knowledge which is producing this dominant episteme. The first site is, quite naturally, the institutions of higher education. If we look both globally and nationally at these institutions, we would see that the university is being taken over by the logic of global capital. Let me quote from a lecture that Martha Nussbaum gave: “The  education of sympathy is being repressed once again today, as arts and humanities programmes are increasingly being cut back in schools in many nations, in favor of a focus on technical and scientific education, which is seen as the key to a nation’s financial success” (2007: 39). Nussbaum is arguing for a reversal of the logic in the innocent belief that her enlightened argument will persuade the managers of the university, and the drivers of global capital, to do otherwise. From the evidence, it seems that she has been unsuccessful. In  India, almost 95% of the new private universities that are coming up do not  have programmes in the arts and humanities, but only in the technical subjects. New Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of

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Management are being set up and Regional Engineering Colleges are being upgraded to become National Institutes of Technology. The  new Central Universities have developed courses that again are biased in favor of the production of such instrumental knowledge. Similar trends mark the policy drivers of the European University which was the initial inspiration for our own older universities. Boaventura de Sousa Santos, in his seminal essay, The University at a Crossroads, describes the crises confronting the European university, on whether it will produce citizens and knowledge which is critical, heterodox, and non-marketable or “whether it will produce human capital, subject to market fluctuations like any other capital” (2012b: 15). Higher education policy in India is being driven by the logic of global capital, to produce human capital, as can be seen in the National Knowledge Commission report on Higher Education.12 The best products of these institutions of higher education, especially the elite institutions, are then absorbed by the global consultancy firms, investment banks, ratings agencies, think tanks, and market survey firms. Through such recruitment, they get a double benefit: good minds and a good network. This in itself is nothing to lament. In fact, if it is giving young people a job, then I have no argument with it. But what is pernicious is that these user institutions have grown significantly and taken over our mind-space and thereby our policy making. The way this is done is through the informal networks they have established, networks of the college tie, through which they have privileged information on what is being planned at the higher levels of government and industry and through which they get the endorsements they require. When corporates begin to recruit fresh graduates from elite colleges then you know that what you are witnessing is not just a process of co-option, defanging the political protesters of tomorrow who came from such institutions in the sixties and seventies, but also the reproduction of the sustainable network of global capitalism. The  members of these institutions, because of their proximity to policy makers, and because they succeed in winning the consultancies on offer, become the new producers of knowledge in the public sphere. This knowledge, that is produced by the consultancy firms and investment banks, is not driven by the search for truth which must meet the stringent requirements of the validity protocols of social sciences, but is driven, instead, by the economic interests of the client, i.e., by the interests of global capital. None of these institutions would produce a study that decries the incentive structure of global capital, on which compensation packages are based, arguing that it is unethical and unsupported by evidence and that the calculation of reward is whimsical and arbitrary. The recolonization of the mind masks the logic of global capital which has produced an incentive system that is the basis of all key policy making. Such a logic has now begun to dominate the compensation packages in India.

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Let us not be distracted by the argument that there are many logics of global capital, the Nordic logic which has a welfarist dimension, the Japanese logic, which is paternalistic, the South European logic that is state centric. While all these logics do have a particular historical-social presence, in a situation of conflict, they lose out to the dominant logic of the incentive system that drives Wall Street. They  become subservient to it. Does not  the loss of Nokia by Finland show this? Does not Greece being beaten to its knees show this? Does not the new debate in Japan about abandoning its practice of life-long security for its workers show this? Does not China’s and India’s rising Gini coefficient show this? A discourse elite has emerged that dominates the production of the public mind. What they recommend dominates our mind-space. In fact, their view of the world has become normalized, and this is what is alarming because what is in fact ideological is being presented as the product of an evidence-based policy framework. My re-colonization of the mind argument will be read as too ideological by the leaders of the new public discourse, whereas, in fact, it is the other way around. This can only be demonstrated by winning the battle of counter-factuals that each side must produce. The colonization of the mind, in an earlier era, produced a feeling of inferiority and a desire, on the part of the colonized, to adopt the ideas of the colonizers. It was the enslavement of the mind. The recolonization of the mind today is having the same consequences.

Notes 1 In  1829, the Bengal Code was promulgated in British India rule by the then Governor-General Lord William Bentinck, which made the practice of sati illegal and subject to prosecution. 2 In  a column in the Bangalore Mirror, of 29 April 2016: (http://bangalorem ir ror.ind iat i mes.com /colu m ns/v iews/Sha kespea re -a f ter- Sha kespea re/ articleshow/52046055.cms), Chandan Gowda reminisces about the impact that Shakespeare and Shakespeare scholars had to Kannada intellectuals who studied English at university: “Shakespeare arrived in India, of course, as part of the British colonial enterprise  […] but he did not  remain the monopoly of the British,” as Shakespeare plays were translated into Kannada. 3 See National Knowledge Commission website, available at http://knowledgecommissionarchive.nic.in, accessed in May 2017. 4 See www.ndtv.com/india-news/told-smriti-irani-history-books-must-change-saysman-behind-ban-on-wendy-doniger-book-593826?site=full. 5 Batra is opposed to these multiple and alternative readings. 6 Published in the Indian Express newspaper, edition of 24 June 2014. 7 Joint Entrance Examination ( JEE) is an engineering entrance examination conducted for admission to various engineering colleges in India. [Editor’s note] 8 Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) is an entrance examination, required to all candidates applying to USA universities. 9 See www.alter net.org/cor porate-accountability-and-workplace/chomskyhow-amer icas-g reat-university-system-getting and www.theatlantic.com/ education/archive/2016/04/the-pillaging-of-americas-state-universities /477594/?utm_ source=SFFB, accessed in May 2017.

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10 Vipul Mudgal in a private conversation with me. 11 The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) is a coalition of center-left political parties in India, headed by the Indian National Congress. [Editor’s note] 12 Available at http://knowledgecommissionarchive.nic.in/downloads/recommendations/ HigherEducationNote.pdf, accessed in June 2017.

References Alvares, Claude (2001), Launching the Multiversity, 24th July 2019, available at www.swaraj. org/shikshantar/claudels3.htm. Benda, Julien (1955 [1928]), The Betrayal of the Intellectuals. Boston: Beacon Press. Bhattacharya, Krishna Chandra (1954 [1931]), “Swaraj in Ideas”, Visvabharati Quarterly, 20, 103–114. Césaire, Aimé (1972), Discourse on Colonialism. New York: Monthly Review Press. Chakrabarti, Arindam, and Weber, Ralph (2015), Comparative Philosophy Without Borders. London: Bloomsbury. Cunha, Tristao de Braganza (1961 [1944]), “Denationalization of Goans”, in Goa’s Freedom Struggle. Bombay: Dr. T. B. Cunha Committee, 55–98. Drèze, Jean, and Sen, Amartya (2013), An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Dussel, Enrique (2013), “Agenda for a South-South Philosophical Dialogue”, Human Architecture, XI(1), 3–18. doi:10.13185/BU2013.17101. Fanon, Frantz (1967), Black Skin,White Masks. New York: Grove. Foucault, Michel (1984), The Foucault Reader. New York: Pantheon. Guha, Ranajit (1988), “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India”, in Ranajit Guha and Gayatri C. Spivak (eds.), Selected Subaltern Studies. New York: Oxford University Press, 37–43. Memmi, Albert (1992 [1955]), The Pillar of Salt. Boston: Beacon Press. Mignolo, Walter (2002), “The  Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Colonial Difference”, South Atlantic Quarterly, 101(1), 57–92. doi:10.1215/00382876-101-1-57. Nussbaum, Martha (2007), “Cultivating Humanity and World Citizenship”, in Forum for the Future of Higher Education (ed.), Forum Futures. Cambridge, MA: Forum for the Future of Higher Education, 37–40. Parekh, Bhikhu C. (1999), Colonialism,Tradition, and Reform: An Analysis of Gandhi’s Political Discourse. New Delhi: Sage. Quijano, Anibal (2000),“Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America”, Nepentla: Views From the South, 1(3), 533–580. doi:10.1177/0268580900015002005. Ramanujan, A. K. (1989), “Is there an Indian Way of Thinking? An Informal Essay”, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 23(1), 41–58. doi:10.1177/006996689023001004. Rudolph, Susanne (2005), “The  Imperialism of Categories: Situating Knowledge in a Globalizing World”, Perspectives on Politics, 3(1), 5–14. doi:10.1017/S1537592705050024. Said, Edward (1986),“Intellectuals in the Post-Colonial World”, Salmangundi, 71/72, 44–64. Said, Edward (2000), Reflections on Exile and other Literary and Cultural Essays. London: Granta Books. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2012a), “Public Sphere and Epistemologies of the South”, Africa Development, 37(1), 43–67. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2012b), “The University at a Crossroads”, Human Architecture, X(1), 7–16.

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Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2014), Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Stiglitz, Joseph (2014), “Inequality is not Inevitable”, The New York Times, edition of June 27th, 2014, available at http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/opinionator/2014/06/27/ inequality-is-not-inevitable/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0 (accessed June 2016). Tagore, Rabindranath (1996), The  English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore (edited by Sisir Kumar Das).Vol. 2, Plays, Stories, Essays. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. Thiong’o, Ngugi wa (1986), Decolonizing the Mind: The  Politics of Language in African Literature. London: Heinemann. UNESCO (2015), Rethinking Education:Towards a Global Common Good? Paris: UNESCO.

12 EPISTEMIC EXTRACTIVISM A Dialogue with Alberto Acosta, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui Ramón Grosfoguel

Introduction Currently, extractivism remains one of the most problematic activities, not only in Latin America, but throughout the world. Within the international division of labor, extractivism is the mechanism that links the exploitation of resources and raw materials in the periphery—with all its damaging consequences for the lives of mine workers, their communities, and the environment—to scientific projects such as Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN) in Switzerland, computer chips, and iPhones. Extractivism has consequences not only in terms of the impoverishment of mine workers, but also the processes which destroy life and the ecology of the planet. Following the collapse of the stock markets in 2008 and the rise of China with its attendant need for raw materials for a form of Western-centric, ecodestructive industrialization replicating North-centric technologies, the price of metals rose to unprecedented levels. This led to speculation on the part of the extractive industries on the world stock markets, with damaging ecological consequences for the planet. In addition to ecological destruction, this included the violence used to remove human beings from their territories, most of whom were subjects racialized within the “zones of non-being” in the world system.1 The  victims of these processes worldwide are the peoples classified as nonWestern which, in the case of Latin America, basically means indigenous and Afro-descendant populations. The  violence deployed by armed actors, both state and private, is designed to ethnically cleanse territories to enable mining companies to take over the land and its resources, particularly when communities refuse to be bought out and organize resistance to extractivist destruction.

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Extractivism is not new: it has a long history which began with European colonial expansion in 1492. As the Ecuadorian writer Alberto Acosta observes: Extractivism is a mode of accumulation that started to be established on a mass scale 500  years ago. The  world economy—the capitalist system—began to be structured with the conquest and colonization of the Americas, Africa, and Asia. This extractivist mode of accumulation has been determined ever since by the demands of the metropolitan centers of nascent capitalism. Some regions specialized in the extraction and production of raw materials—primary commodities—while others took on the role of producing manufactured goods. The former export nature, the latter import it. (Acosta 2012) As Europe was a leading market for products from Asia until the nineteenth century, the gold and silver which Europeans obtained via the extractive industries in the Americas ended up in China and India between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. This  global capitalist system, which began with European colonial expansion in 1492, was established from the outset on the basis of the international division of labor into metropolitan centers and peripheral countries, with one exporting raw materials and the other manufactured goods. Without the conquest of Africa, Asia, and America, there would have been no world capitalism. Hence, we are referring to a system that has been both capitalist and colonialist since it began. Without colonialism and colonial domination, there would be no global capitalist market. Colonialism is fundamental to capitalism: the one is inherent to the other. Hence, we are not living in a purely capitalist system, but a historical capitalism which is inherently colonial and therefore racist. This point is implicit in the text by Alberto Acosta. We will continue with his definition of extractivism: In  an attempt to arrive at a comprehensible definition, we will use the term extractivism to refer to those activities which remove large quantities of natural resources that are not processed (or processed only to a limited degree), especially for export. Extractivism is not limited to minerals or oil. Extractivism is also present in farming, forestry, and even fishing. In practice, extractivism has been a mechanism of colonial and neocolonial plunder and appropriation.This extractivism, which has appeared in different guises over time, was forged in the exploitation of the raw materials essential for the industrial development and prosperity of the global North. And this took place regardless of the sustainability of the extractivist projects or even the exhaustion of the resources. This is compounded by the fact that most of what is produced by the extractive industries is not for consumption in the domestic market, but basically destined for export. (Acosta 2012)

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Here, we see how extractivism signifies removing natural resources, which are not  processed (or are only minimally processed) for export and amounts to much more than simply extracting minerals or petroleum. Extractivism extends to agriculture, fishing, and forestry. Extractivism is the pillage and plunder witnessed from the colonial age to the neoliberal neocolonialism of the present day. It involves the looting, dispossession, theft, and appropriation of the resources of the global South (the South of the North, and the South within the North) for the benefit of certain demographic minorities on this planet who constitute the global North (the North of the South, and the North within the South) and are considered racially superior, comprising the capitalist elites within the world system.2 Moreover, extractivism is central to the destruction of all forms of life. Extractivism follows the Western-centric concept of “nature” to the letter. The problem with this concept of “nature” is that it remains a colonial concept, since it is a word inscribed within the civilizational project of modernity. In other cosmogonies, the word “nature,” for example, does not feature and effectively does not exist, since so-called “nature” is not an object, but a subject and a part of life in all its (human and non-human) forms. Thus, the notion of nature is, in itself, Eurocentric, Western-centric, and anthropocentric. It is a highly problematic concept, since it implies a division between subject (human) and object (nature) in which the (human) subject has life and all the rest is “nature” and is deemed to consist of inert objects. Consequently, its forms of life are inferior to human life and are inscribed within a Western instrumentalist rationale of ends and means, in which “nature” becomes a means to an end. In short, within the dualist, Western-centric, Cartesian worldview, the human is conceived of as exterior to nature, and nature is seen as a means to achieving an end. When this rationale is applied to technological production, as has been the case during the last 5 centuries of modernity, it also provides the justification for the destruction of life, since any technology constructed on the basis of this notion of “nature” and understood in this dualist, Western-centric way encapsulates a rationale for the destruction of life, given that it does not contemplate the reproduction of life. It is therefore a problematic notion, resting on the domination exercised by the coloniality of power, knowledge, and being. Conversely, the “non-Western” worldviews in the epistemologies of the South (Santos and Meneses 2009), which do not subscribe to this dualistic vision of the world, but instead contain a holistic notion of diversity within oneness (for example, the Pachamama of the Andean indigenous peoples, Twaheed in Islam, Ubuntu in Africa), offer a completely different perspective. In this holistic vision, «nature» does not exist, only the “cosmos,” within which we all exist as interdependent, coexisting forms of life. This  leads to the argument that human life does not exist independently of the ecological system, but depends on other forms of life. Human life is conceived of as part of the ecology of the planet, and thus if we destroy our ecosystem or other forms of life surrounding

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us, we destroy ourselves. Hence, the ecology and its various forms of life and existence are not a means to achieve a separate end, but an end in themselves. Any technology that is constructed on the basis of this principle contains the rationale for the production of life. It is important to stress how such a simple cosmological principle can have enormous consequences for the production/reproduction of (human and nonhuman) life, for the cosmos and for the ecology of the planet. Modernity is a civilizational project and, as indigenous critical thinkers on the planet believe, constitutes a civilization of death, since it has destroyed more forms of (human and non-human) life than any other civilization in human history. Modernity is an “ecologicidal” civilization, to the extent that nowadays we do not know whether the human species, or other species, will survive Western civilization. Decolonizing the Western-centric view of the cosmos and moving toward holistic perspectives is essential to the future of life on the planet. Extractivism is one of the industries that destroys life and encapsulates the destructive rationale of Western civilization. If we observe what is happening in the extractivist industry sites, namely, in areas on the periphery that are considered “zones of non-being” in planetary terms because they have been conceived of as inhabited by racially inferior subjects who are the wretched of the earth (Fanon 1966), the materiality of domination includes dispossession and violence (Santos and Meneses 2009). In  places where copper is mined, such as Chile, or gold, such as Colombia, mining companies destroy the local ecology, bringing diseases to local communities, and use brutal forms of violence against workers or populations who resist. Meanwhile, the zones of being inhabited by those considered racially superior and therefore the fortunate of the earth, benefit from the final products which have caused deaths in the extraction sites. Copper chips for computers or iPhones and the gold used in jewelry and conductors for the Information technology (IT) industry are beyond the reach of the mass of human subjects who labor in the mining zones of non-being. In the zones of being, the system uses regulatory and emancipatory mechanisms to manage conflicts, whilst in the zones of non-being, they are settled by violence and dispossession.3 One side produces life and the other death. The ways of enjoying life in one depend on the possible destruction of life in the other. The fortunate of the earth live at the expense of the wretched of the earth.4 Death in one produces life in the other. This system of global injustice lies at the heart of the debate on extractivism. As Acosta observes: Extractivism has been a constant in the economic, social, and political life of many countries in the global South. Thus, with differing degrees of intensity, every country in Latin America is affected by these practices. Dependency on the metropolitan centers via the extraction and export of raw materials has remained practically unaltered to this day. […] Therefore,

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beyond a few differences of greater or lesser importance, the extractivist mode of accumulation seems to be at the heart of the production policies of both neoliberal and progressive governments. (Acosta 2012) Alberto Acosta is cited extensively here because he provides an excellent summary of the political economy of extractivism. As with racism, in extractivism there are no differences between left or right Westernized governments.The same exploitation, destruction, and violence produced by the extractivist transnationals is reproduced, regardless of the nature of the government of the day. Moreover, in some cases, these governments use the same levels of violence against their victims. The developmentalist ideology is part of the Western-centric rationale of both the left and the right and all means justify this end, including the destruction and violence directed toward all forms of (human and non-human) life which result from extractivism. Much has been written about the political economy of extractivism. However, perhaps more studies are needed on how the Westernized left—such as the left-wing governments in Bolivia, Venezuela, and Ecuador— with its epistemological Eurocentrism, reproduces the same vision and developmentalist extractivist practices as right-wing governments, since they share the same Eurocentric vision of the universe. This is not to deny the qualitative difference which these left-wing governments offer in comparison to the neoliberal machinations that previously existed in these countries. Nevertheless, the problem remains that being on the left is no guarantee in terms of the destruction of life caused by Western-centric developmentalist ideas. However, the aim of this chapter is to discuss other aspects of extractivism, such as epistemic and ontological extractivism, as ways of thinking, being, and acting in the world.

Epistemic Extractivism Cognitive extractivism is a concept that was first introduced at the beginning of 2013 by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, an intellectual from the indigenous Mississauga Nishnaabeg people in Canada. Her thinking extends the concept of economic extractivism to new practices within colonial domination. We begin by citing the following observations on what Leanne Betasamosake Simpson terms cognitive extractivism: When there was a push to bring traditional knowledge into environmental thinking after Our Common Future  [a report issued by the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development] in the late 1980s, it was a very extractivist approach: “Let’s take whatever teachings you might have that would help us right out of your context, right away from your knowledge holders, right out of your language, and integrate them into this assimilatory mindset.” It’s the idea that traditional knowledge and indigenous peoples have some sort of secret of how to live on the land in

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a non-exploitive way that broader society needs to appropriate. But the extractivist mindset isn’t about having a conversation and having a dialogue and bringing in indigenous knowledge on the terms of indigenous peoples. It is very much about extracting whatever ideas scientists or environmentalists thought were good and assimilating it […] put it onto toilet paper and sell it to people. There’s an intellectual extraction, a cognitive extraction, as well as a physical one. The machine around promoting extractivism is huge in terms of TV, movies, and popular culture. (Simpson apud Klein 2013) Here Leanne Betasamosake Simpson takes the concept of extractivism and extends it to new areas to define a particular attitude toward knowledge. She takes the example of the United Nations project on the environment and development, in which the ideas of indigenous peoples throughout the world are appropriated in order to colonialize them by assimilating them into Western knowledge. Through this assimilation or, in other words, by subsuming these forms of indigenous knowledge within Western knowledge, the radical politics and “alternative” critique of cosmogony are stripped away to make them more acceptable, or else simply extracted from a more radical epistemic matrix in order to depoliticize them. Intellectual, cognitive, or epistemic extractivism represents a mentality that does not seek any dialogue that implies an equal, horizontal dialogue between peoples or any understanding of indigenous knowledge on its own terms, but instead aims to extract ideas to colonize them, subsuming them within Western cultural parameters and episteme. Epistemic extractivism extracts ideas (whether scientific or environmentalist) from indigenous communities, removing them from the contexts in which they were produced to depoliticize them and give them a new meaning based on Western-centric ideas. The aim of epistemic extractivism is to plunder ideas in order to promote and transform them into economic capital, or appropriate them into the Western academic machinery to earn symbolic capital. In both cases, this involves decontextualizing them in order to remove the radical content and may depoliticize them in order to make them more commercially attractive. In the extractivist mindset, the aim is to appropriate traditional knowledge so that transnational corporations can draw up private patents or academics in Western universities can claim to have produced “original” ideas, as if they held the copyright to them. The accomplices in this epistemological pillage and plunder are the economic/academic/political/military imperial machinery of the West and the puppet governments of the Third World manipulated by the Westernized elites. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson continues: In this kind of thinking, every part of our culture that is seemingly useful to the extractivist mindset gets extracted. The canoe, the kayak, any technology that we had that was useful was extracted and assimilated into the culture of the settlers without regard for the people and the knowledge that created it. (Simpson apud Klein 2013)

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From an extractivist perspective, any potentially useful object, technology, or idea that comes from indigenous cultures is extracted and assimilated by the colonizing cultures without acknowledging the peoples who produced this knowledge. This is done by excluding the peoples who have produced these objects, technologies, and knowledge from the symbolic and economic capital flows. Thus, objects, ideas, and technologies are extracted from them for the benefit of others, whilst they remain destitute. In addition to being robbed of their resources and seeing their environment destroyed by economic extractivism, they are also robbed of their knowledge and technology by epistemic extractivism.

Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui’s Critique of Well-Known Intellectuals within the Modernity/Coloniality Network Although she does not use these terms, we can find similar approaches to the epistemic and ontological extractivism described by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson in the work of the Bolivian author Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui. As she states in an interview with Boaventura de Sousa Santos: “The  authoritative word belongs to those at the top; those at the bottom just provide the input. It’s the same for any knowledge system: we produce the raw material and they give it back to us as a finished product.”5 In epistemic extractivism, the “original” theory that has been appropriated is presented as having been “produced” by the global North, whilst the peoples of the global South are restricted to producing input in the form of experiences which are then appropriated by the North and returned as fully developed theories. Although she does not use this expression, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui is also describing the process which the indigenous author Leanne Betasamosake Simpson has termed cognitive extractivism. It is very interesting to see how someone with close links to the Aymara people in Bolivia identifies very similar processes to those cited by another individual with links to the Mississauga Nishnaabeg people in Canada. Moreover, as Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui warns, there are even perverse forms of epistemic extractivism dedicated to colonizing the knowledge of the South in the name of epistemic decolonization. She observes, with reference to Walter Mignolo: Mignolo and company have built a small empire within an empire, strategically appropriating the contributions of the school of subaltern studies in India and the many Latin American variants of critical reflection on colonization and decolonization. (Rivera Cusicanqui 2010: 58) At  one point, Dr. Mignolo got the urge to praise me, perhaps putting into practice a saying we have in the south of Bolivia: “Praise the fool if you want to see [her] work more.” Taking up my ideas about internal

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colonialism and the epistemology of oral history, he regurgitated them entangled in a discourse on alterity that was profoundly depoliticized. (Rivera Cusicanqui 2010: 64) These decontextualized and depoliticized extractivist appropriations of the knowledge of the South by academics in the global North form part of the epistemically racist hierarchies within the production of knowledge in which the authorship of the thinkers of the South is deleted and replaced by that of the thinkers of the North. Referring to an experience with an Anglo-Saxon journal which obliged her to cite Quijano and Mignolo on theories which she herself and other Latin American authors had produced decades earlier, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui states: Through the game of who cites whom, hierarchies are structured, and we end up having to consume, in a regurgitated form, the very ideas regarding decolonization that we indigenous people and intellectuals of Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador have produced independently. And this process began in the 1970s—the rarely quoted work of Pablo González Casanovas on “internal colonialism” was published in 1969—when Mignolo and Quijano were still advocating a positivist Marxism and a linear vision of history. (Rivera Cusicanqui 2010: 66) This  wake-up call from Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui concerning the way in which knowledge originally produced in Latin America is now being recycled as something original produced by a few respected academics in the North, even though it originated in Latin America, serves as a reminder that epistemic extractivism can also emerge in authors who speak in the name of epistemological decolonization. Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui’s critique of Walter Mignolo and Aníbal Quijano is very similar to what Leanne Betasamosake Simpson defines as “cognitive extractivism.” There are two questions which should be highlighted in Rivera Cusicanqui’s critique. On the one hand, the essential issue concerning Aníbal Quijano is his epistemic racism, which undermines indigenous, mestizo, and Afrodescendant knowledge by adopting ideas based on this knowledge without ever citing the mestizo, indigenous, or Afro-descendant intellectuals who produced them. On the other hand, the essential issue which she censures in people like Mignolo is the way in which they appropriate the ideas of thinkers representing those engaged in struggle, without engaging politically with the social movements or campaigns of indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples. They  produce knowledge without ever associating their writing and work with these peoples’ struggle for liberation, but instead to acquire symbolic and economic capital and intellectual recognition in the academies of the global North. It is this which constitutes the decontextualization and depoliticization deployed by

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“epistemic extractivism” in the racist epistemic version produced by Quijano and the populist epistemic version produced by Mignolo (Grosfoguel 2013a). Confirming Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui’s critique, it would appear very curious that in a recent article, Walter Mignolo refers to certain theories presented by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson without ever mentioning her radical critique of epistemic and ontological extractivism (Mignolo 2014: 21–52). It would have been interesting if Mignolo had given serious consideration to this concept as the basis for engaging in critical self-reflection on the subject. However, he does not even mention it. He also adopts certain elements from Betasamosake Simpson, depoliticizing them and downplaying the radical nature of her thinking, whilst ignoring aspects associated with any radical critique of the colonial extractivist epistemology used by “Mignolo and company.”6 If extractivism is a way of thinking and producing knowledge, then the problem can easily multiply amongst white and mestizo Latin American authors in possession of knowledge produced by indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples in the Americas. Quijano himself, in a recent article on Buen Vivir (“Good Living”) (Quijano 2012), appropriates the critical thinking on this concept produced by indigenous intellectuals in the Andes without citing any of them. In fact, of the 20 bibliographical citations in the article by Aníbal Quijano on Buen Vivir, 17 refer to the author himself, one to a British historian who is a specialist in ancient history, and the other two to two of his mestizo disciples. Not  one indigenous thinker is mentioned in the article, yet if there is one subject to which indigenous Andean intellectuals have made a significant contribution, it is precisely the theme of Buen Vivir. Once again, a concept produced by the indigenous world and developed by its intellectuals has been extracted, without any acknowledgement. Moreover, Javier Lajo, the famous indigenous Amazonian intellectual from Peru who has written extensively on the subject of Buen Vivir,7 is not  even mentioned in the article by the mestizo Peruvian intellectual Aníbal Quijano, thus reproducing the highly damaging practices in epistemic extractivism. For Leanne Betasamosake, the alternative to this colonial form of epistemic plundering which leads to cognitive extractivism is: a shift in mindset from seeing indigenous people as a resource to extract to seeing us as intelligent, articulate, relevant, living, breathing peoples and nations. I think that requires individuals and communities and people to develop fair and meaningful and authentic relationships with us […] We have a lot of ideas about how to live gently within our territory in a way where we have separate jurisdictions and separate nations but over a shared territory. I think there’s a responsibility on the part of mainstream community and society to figure out a way of living more sustainably and extracting themselves from extractivist thinking. And taking on their own work and own responsibility to figure out how to live responsibly

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and be accountable to the next seven generations of people. To me, that’s a shift that Canadian society needs to take on, that’s their responsibility. Our responsibility is to continue to recover that knowledge, recover those practices, recover the stories and philosophies, and rebuild our nations from the inside out. (Klein 2013) Seeing indigenous peoples as social actors who think and produce valid knowledge for all, rather than as a resource that can be extracted, is the first step toward the epistemic decolonization which Leanne Betasamosake Simpson proposes. She  adds that the second step is the requirement for communities to live responsibly and extract themselves from extractivist thinking. Living responsibly is summed up in her statement: “The  alternative to extractivism is deep reciprocity.” The decolonial alternative she therefore proposes is deep reciprocity as a way of being and living in the world. Reciprocity entails a profound revolution in ways of life. Living according to the principle of reciprocity involves relations based on fair exchanges between human beings and between humans and non-humans. If the ecology of the planet gives us water, food, air, etc. so that we can live, the reciprocity principle involves reproducing and returning what we have taken from the cosmos. Extracting without giving back is the principle which leads to the destruction of life. Extracting whilst taking care to reproduce life and return what has been extracted is a completely different cosmological principle. It implies a planetary ecological awareness that does not follow the power structures of Western civilization, which nowadays is global and the only one left in existence after destroying all others with over 500 years of colonial and neocolonial expansion. Hence, for Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, epistemic decolonization is not  sufficient: a radical change in forms of being, living, and acting in the world is also necessary.

Ontological Extractivism Extractivism is a way of being and living in the world or, in other words, it is a form of existence, an ontology. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson states that: Extracting is taking. Actually, extracting is stealing. It  is taking without consent, without thought, care or even knowledge of the impacts on the other living things in that environment. That’s always been a part of colonialism and conquest. Colonialism has always extracted the indigenous—extraction of indigenous knowledge, indigenous women, indigenous peoples….Our elders have been warning us about this for generations now—they saw the unsustainability of settler society immediately. Societies based on conquest cannot be sustained, so yes, I do think we’re getting closer to that breaking point for sure. We’re running out of time. We’re losing the opportunity to turn this thing around.

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We don’t have time for this massive slow transformation into something that’s sustainable and alternative. I do feel like I’m getting pushed up against the wall. Maybe my ancestors felt that 200 years ago or 400 years ago. But I don’t think it matters. (Simpson apud Klein 2013) Extractivism is theft, pillage, and plunder. It  is a way of existing and acting in the world which involves appropriating the resources of others without their consent and without thinking or worrying about the negative impact this will have on the lives of other (human and non-human) living beings. The  argument behind the ontological extractivist attitude is: “As long as I benefit, I don’t care about the consequences for other living beings (humans and non-humans).” These egocentric attitudes and self-centered ways of living and behaving belong to societies shaped by a long history of imperialism, capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy or, in other words, of looting the wealth, labor, and knowledge of other peoples considered racially inferior, and women, for the benefit of the few peoples considered racially superior, or chauvinist males who believe they have privileges over women because they see them as resources to be exploited. Imperial/colonial/capitalist/patriarchal societies are unsustainable because they live by robbing and destroying others (humans and non-humans). Societies based on the conquest of humans and non-humans destroy the means of reproducing life. Egocentricity is part of the subjectivity associated with colonialism and patriarchy, since what is important is the egoistic interests of the male colonizer, even if this implies the destruction of humans and non-humans throughout the planet. Irrationality prevails because in the long term the colonizers themselves are affected, given that the idea that human beings can exist outside the cosmos and the ecology of the planet is a myth. If we destroy the cosmos and the ecology of the planet, we destroy ourselves. Sages in ancestral communities have been warning of the consequences of this Western-centric destruction for centuries. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is now announcing that time is running out, since the destruction of the planet is accelerating, and we are missing the chance to preserve life on earth for future generations. She adds: Extraction and assimilation go together. Colonialism and capitalism are based on extracting and assimilating. My land is seen as a resource. My relatives in the plant and animal worlds are seen as resources. My culture and knowledge is a resource. My body is a resource and my children are a resource because they are the potential to grow, maintain, and uphold the extraction-assimilation system. The act of extraction removes all of the relationships that give whatever is being extracted meaning. (Simpson apud Klein 2013) Extractivism and assimilationism work hand in hand. In the extractivist view of the world, everything is transformed into a resource that can be extracted

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to sell for profit, as a commodity on the world market. This  ranges from forms of (human and non-human) life to cultural artifacts and knowledge. Everything is seen as a tool that can be used to preserve the extractivist and assimilationist way of life—a form of existence which depoliticizes, decontextualizes, and strips away the linguistic and cultural meanings of the artifacts and objects that are extracted. Hence, in addition to extracting from others to benefit oneself, extractivism as a form of being and existing that extracts/eliminates/subtracts indigenous meanings and cultures in order to resignify/assimilate everything within Western-centric forms of existence, experience, and thinking. The  artifacts and objects that are extracted have meanings within specific cultural contexts. A  canoe, a plant, or a drum all have ethical, political, and spiritual meanings for peoples with ancestral traditions. However, when they are transferred to the West, the canoe becomes a commodity, the plant a hallucinogenic substance, and the drum a rhythm with no spiritual significance. When they are removed from their original contexts and placed in new ones, they lose their indigenous sense and significance and are assimilated into the Eurocentric cultural matrix of modernity. This assimilation principle is epistemicide,8 since it ultimately destroys ancestral knowledge and practices. What was once a sacred principle that entailed respect for all forms of life becomes a secularized principle involving the destruction of life. Ancestral artifacts, objects, and knowledge are inscribed/assimilated within other contexts which give them a very different sense and significance. Epistemicide and “existencialicide” involve destroying the knowledge and ways of living associated with artifacts, knowledge, and objects that have been extracted and assimilated into Western culture and ways of being and existing. Anything that is different loses its uniqueness when it is assimilated. The machinery of modernism transforms everything into a disenchanted world with no soul or spirit, destroying other ways of thinking and existing in favor of Western ways of thinking and existence. The problem is not that no culture has the right to absorb things from other cultures. The  problem is when one culture destroys another, appropriating its contributions in the process and leaving no trace of the peoples who produced them. We move from an enchanted world with rituals and respect for other forms of life and existence to a disenchanted world in which the whole of human culture is different and everything classified as non-human loses its uniqueness as a subject and is transformed into a lifeless object, subsumed within the destruction of life that serves the selfish ends of Western colonialism. Extractivist capitalism inherently privileges Western ways of life and destroys all other culturally and biologically different forms of life. These privileged Western ways of life are imposed as the only ontologically possible human choices, whilst other culturally and cosmologically different forms of human existence are ontologized as animal and inferior.

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Leanne Betasamosake Simpson ends by connecting the extractivist way of life, or ontological extractivism, to developmentalist extractivist political economy: Indigenous communities, particularly in places where there is significant pressure to develop natural resources, face tremendous imposed economic poverty. Billions of dollars of natural resources have been extracted from their territories, without their permission and without compensation. That’s the reality. We have not had the right to say no to development because ultimately those communities are not  seen as people, they are seen as resources. (Simpson apud Klein 2013) Natural resources are extracted without permission or consent, leaving communities throughout the world in mass poverty. Moreover, they do not enjoy the right to genuine democratic consultation on the issue of development, since in the final analysis they are seen as non-human or, in other words, as resources or objects that are not worth consulting. The extractivist principle not only genocidally destroys other living human and non-human beings, impoverishes peoples, extracts, strips away and appropriates their resources, and epistemicidally destroys their knowledge, but also, by transforming everything into an object and a resource, eradicates the political agency of the objectified actors and the entire notion of democracy. Extractivism is a form of blatant fascism that has ranged from the “Christianize or I will kill you” of the sixteenth century to the “civilize or I will kill you” of the nineteenth century, the “develop or I will kill you” of the twentieth century and the “democratize or I will kill you” of the twenty-first century. All these global colonial projects are associated with the “extractivism or I will kill you” that has been a constant since the sixteenth century. Consequently, nowadays in Latin America and in the neocolonized world, “prior consultation” procedures involving non-Western communities are a joke in poor taste. Transnationals are buying up the leaders of some of these peoples, and those who resist are assassinated with a violence that amounts to ethnic cleansing (genocide), carried out by military or paramilitary teams. In  Colombia, for example, when a community collaborates with a multinational extractivist project because it has been won over with money, “prior consultation” then takes place, as recognized by law. However, when a community resists, paramilitary groups arrive and the territory is ethnically cleansed. After the massacres, since there are no human beings left in the area, prior consultation is cynically declared invalid. This principle of violence, death, and blatant genocide has intensified throughout the world following the rise in the price of metals and minerals caused by financial speculation in the wake of the 2008 crisis, although it has been in existence since 1492. It  can be observed in other parts of America and the rest of the world (such as Brazil, South Africa, and Mexico). In stealing knowledge without prior consultation

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or acknowledgment of its creators, academics are also implicated in this pillage. Epistemicidal theft has been part of global, Western-centric extractivism since the start of European colonial expansion, over 500 years ago.

(In)conclusion: Modern Science and Epistemic Extractivism Part of the explanation for what has happened historically is that an obscurantist Christianity, which lasted from the fourth century under the Emperor Constantine to the seventeenth century in the Early Modern/colonial world, did not allow science or critical thinking to develop. Everything which questioned the dogmas of the church was considered to be associated with the work of the devil. Consequently, Europe was obliged to “secularize” in the face of the power of the Church in order to develop science and absorb the science of other civilizations which had made significant advances. The most important source of scientific influence, given its proximity, was Islamic civilization. The  origins of modern science lie in a massive act of epistemological extractivism. A  considerable part of the basis of modern European sciences and philosophy was taken from Muslim scientists and philosophers. However, with the colonization and consequent destruction of other civilizations and their respective knowledge production infrastructures, science was monopolized by European men, leaving other peoples to fall into epistemic decline (Grosfoguel 2013b). As a consequence of the modern construct of race, which makes European man a racially superior being, narratives were created for the history of science which omitted the contributions of the non-Western civilizations the West had drawn on to produce its science and philosophy, thus creating the modern racial myth that science had its origins in Western men. Hence, we celebrate Copernicus, but forget Ibn al-Shatir, the scientist from Damascus who, 300  years earlier, had developed the exact mathematical theorems used by the former, or Al-Biruni, the Persian Muslim astronomer who, 500  years earlier, had already formulated the idea that the earth revolved around the sun and rotated on its own axis.9 The same happened with the invention of the printing press, which was attributed to Gutenberg although it existed 600  years prior to this and had been invented by the Chinese. It also happened with Greek philosophy, which arrived in Europe via the Andalusian philosophers Averroes and Maimonides. This  appropriation of knowledge and eradication of the historical memory of the origins of philosophy and modern science constituted the modern/colonial epistemic extractivist project from its earliest days at the end of the fifteenth century to the present day. It  was a colonial extractivist process that would recur throughout the 5 centuries that followed in its Eurocentric left or rightwing versions and, more recently, in its most pernicious form, in the name of the “decolonial.”

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Notes 1 On the subject of violence in zones of being and non-being, see Grosfoguel (2011a). 2 The phrase “global South” is not used here as a geographical term, but as a positioning within the power relations and dominance of the “West” in relation to the “non-Western” world. On this topic, see the Introduction. 3 The view of Fanon (1966) is linked here with that of Sousa Santos and Meneses (2009). For a more detailed discussion of this, see Grosfoguel (2011a). 4 Obviously, the notion of the “wretched of the earth” comes from Fanon (1966). I  have added the phase “fortunate of the earth” because although Fanon does not use this term, his work clearly establishes that there are no “wretched” without the “fortunate” in this life-destroying culture which I would define as the “capitalist/patriarchal Western-centric/Christian-centric modern/colonial world system” (Grosfoguel 2011b). 5 This  extract may be found 27m 27s into the recording of the “Conversa do Mundo—Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui and Boaventura de Sousa Santos” interview at www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjgHfSrLnpU, one of the cornerstones of the ALICE project directed by Boaventura de Sousa Santos at the University of Coimbra. 6 I have personally heard Mignolo state in public debates that indigenous thinking in Latin America is a “mine.” This  analogy is symptomatic of the extractivist mindset and ideas which Leanne Betasamosake Simpson describes. The use of indigenous ideas as an “epistemic mine” for personal gain and to forge a successful academic career in the North is essentially what Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui rejects in Mignolo. However, this is less pernicious in the case of Mignolo than in others, since his colonial extractivist discourse is produced in the name of “epistemological decolonization.” 7 See the excellent article by Lajo (2010). See also his article ¿Imaninantataq Suma Kausay? available at https://sites.google.com/site/machaqmara/imaninantataqsumaqkausay. Further articles by Lajo are available at www.herbogeminis.com/IMG/pdf/ Escritos_ Javier_Lajo.pdf. Recent articles can be found at http://hawansuyo.com/ category/javier-lajo. 8 Note of the editors—Epistemicide, a term proposed by Boaventura de Sousa Santos, refers to the massive destruction of subordinated knowledges and experiences. According to the author, “the destruction of knowledge is not an epistemological artifact without consequences. It involves the destruction of the social practices and the disqualification of the social agents that operate according to such knowledges” (Santos 2014: 153). 9 On Copernicus’ debt to Islamic astronomers, see Saliba (2007).

References Acosta, Alberto (2012), “Extractivismo y neoextractivismo: Dos caras de la misma maldición”, EcoPortal.net, July 25. Available at www.ecoportal.net/Temas_Especiales/ Mineria/Extractivismo_y_neoextractivismo_dos_caras_de_la_misma_maldicion (accessed March 2016). Fanon, Franz (1966), Los condenados de la tierra. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Grosfoguel, Ramón (2011a),“La descolonización del conocimiento: diálogo crítico entre la visión descolonial de Frantz Fanon y la sociología descolonial de Boaventura de Sousa Santos”, in AA.VV, Formas-otras: Saber, nombrar, narrar, hacer: IV training seminar de jóvenes investigadores en dinámicas interculturales. Barcelona: Fundación CIDOB, 97–108. Available at www.cidob.org/es/publicaciones/serie_de_publicacion/monografias/monografias/ formas_otras_saber_nombrar_narrar_hacer (accessed March 2016).

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Grosfoguel, Ramón (2011b),“Decolonizing post-colonial studies and paradigms of politicaleconomy: Transmodernity, decolonial thinking and global coloniality”, Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, 1(1), 1–37. Grosfoguel, Ramón (2013a), “Hay que tomarse en serio el pensamiento crítico de los colonizados en toda su complejidad”, Metapolítica, 83, 38–74. Grosfoguel, Ramón (2013b), “Racismo/sexismo epistémico, universidades occidentalizadas y los cuatro genocidios/epistemicidios del siglo XVI”, Tabula Rasa, 19, 31–58. doi:10.25058/20112742.153. Klein, Naomi (2013), “Dancing the world into being: A conversation with Idle-No-More’s Leanne Simpson”, YES Magazine, 5 March. Available at www.yesmagazine.org/peacejustice/dancing-the-world-into-being-a-conversation-with-idle-no-more-leannesimpson (accessed March 2016). Lajo, Javier (2010), “Sumaq Kaway-Ninchik o nuestro vivir bien”, Revista de la Integración, 5, 112–125. Mignolo, Walter (2014), “Further thoughts on (de)coloniality”, in Sabine Broeck and Carsten Junker (eds.), Postcoloniality-Decoloniality-Black Critique: Joints and Fissures. Frankfurt: Campus, 21–52. Quijano, Aníbal (2012), “‘Buen vivir’: Entre el ‘desarrollo’ y la des/colonialidad del poder”, Viento Sur, 122, 46–56. Rivera Cusicanqui, Silvia (2010), Ch’ixinakak utxiwa: Una reflexión sobre prácticas y discursos descolonizadores. Buenos Aires: Tinta Limón. Saliba, George (2007), Islamic Science and the Making of European Renaissance. Boston, MA: MIT. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2014), Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa, and Meneses, Maria Paula (eds.) (2009), Epistemologias do Sul. Coimbra: Almedina.

13 DECOLONIZING THE UNIVERSITY Boaventura de Sousa Santos

Introduction All over the world, the university is facing many challenges, a topic I have addressed in various moments (Santos 2017, 2018). Due to the increasing impact of certain global phenomena on universities worldwide, it seems that the diversity of the past can no longer guarantee the diversity of the future. Even though these challenges are common and widespread, the truth is that universities in various regions of the world are not all equally prepared to respond to them. Such asymmetry is due in part to the uneven and combined ways in which the three main forms of modern domination (capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy) have been operating since the sixteenth century in different regions of the world. In this chapter, I focus on the impact of the articulations between capitalism and colonialism on the university system.1 During the last 30 or 40 years, two apparently contradictory movements have taken place. The first, a bottom-up movement, has involved the social struggles for the right to a university education. As the struggles advanced, it became clear that the university’s elitism was a main symbol of class, race, and gender discrimination in the culture at large. Regarding the three major crises of the modern university (the institutional crisis in general, as well as the crisis of hegemony and the crisis of legitimacy), the aforementioned struggles mainly put in question the legitimacy of the university. To the extent that these struggles were successful, access to the university increased, and new social strata were allowed entrance, thus increasing social heterogeneity and the cultural diversity of the student body. There  were, however, no corresponding changes affecting either the faculty or the curricula and syllabi. As a result, other features of racial, ethnocultural, religious, epistemic, and sexual discrimination became visible. Thus broader

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access, while responding somewhat to the legitimacy crisis, brought to light other critical dimensions. The other movement, a top-down movement, concerns the increasing global pressure on the university to adjust and submit to the relevance and efficacy criteria of global capitalism. Such a movement deepens the capitalist dimension of the modern Eurocentric university which can be designated as university capitalism. By university capitalism I mean the phenomenon that aims at turning the university into a capitalist enterprise, one that therefore functions according to criteria proper to capitalism.Thus, the university is capitalist not because it is at the service of the reproduction of a capitalist society (this has always been the case, at least in the non-communist world), but because it has become a business corporation producing a commodity whose market value derives from its capacity to create other market values (e.g., diplomas that give access to highly paid jobs). The financial crisis of the university, however real, works as an ideal excuse to bring about the university’s adjustment and submission to the increasing demands of global capitalism. The  logic of this movement tends to worsen the hegemony crisis of the university, as the university faces the proliferation of other institutions that produce knowledge with market value. But it ends up contributing to worsen the legitimacy crisis as well. The  ways in which the university is submitting to the demands of capitalism (financial constraints and selective cuts, new hierarchies among disciplines and among departments, managerial changes, etc.) clearly show that its elitism and concurrent exclusions are not only economic, but also, racial, ethnocultural, epistemic, religious, and sexual. As the university becomes more and more compromised with capitalism, its compromise with colonialism and patriarchy becomes increasingly more visible as well. Thus, the expectations created by the said bottom-up movement end up being no more than a great frustration. Dissatisfaction with the university on the part of such social groups that only recently had access to it tends to lead to new social struggles for the right to a non-discriminatory education. University capitalism thus contributes to a deeper perception of university colonialism. By university colonialism I mean the fact that the criteria defining the curricula, the faculty, and the student body are based on an ideology that justifies the superiority of the culture upholding it on the following fallacy: the (presumed) superiority of the said culture, though based on ethnicracial and epistemic criteria, is presented as ineluctable because the culture supporting it is (supposedly) the only true one. Thus, the imposition of one culture upon another appears totally justified. Colonialism is thus a far larger phenomenon than the foreign occupation of a given territory. Although it is prominent in the modern university system as a whole, the mutual intermingling of capitalism and colonialism is particularly visible in the global South. The pressures of global capitalism, while compelling the university to question its future, bring about a counter-movement that challenges the university to confront its colonial past. The university thus faces two mirrors, both of them disquieting,

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one of them reflecting the image of a very uncertain future, the other reflecting the image of a very problematic past. The  two mirrors are actually one and the same.This means that the construction of an emancipatory future for the university involves reckoning with a past that demands reparation. In other words, the struggle against the capitalist university is the other side of the struggle against the colonialist university. These are relatively autonomous struggles, but the success of each of them depends on the success of the other. Bearing this in mind, in this chapter, I intend to identify the main features of the decolonization of the university. The  decolonization of the university must be carried out both in the global South and in the global North, even though the tasks and processes in question may be different in each case. Here I am only referring to the decolonization of the Western-centric university, that is to say, the Western or Westernized university. One more caveat: focusing on the articulation between capitalism and colonialism must not  make us forget that these modes of domination work in tandem with others besides patriarchy; for example, political and religious authoritarianism. Authoritarianism is today affecting the public university worldwide.2 It assumes different forms, some of them subtler, others far more brutal, but its presence is felt everywhere, even in the nations where academic freedom was supposedly originated. By authoritarianism in this context I mean the suppression of dissident knowledge and the exclusion of dissident scholars on the basis of non-democratic, political decisions, or on the basis of religious orthodoxy. Dictatorial regimes and religious states have been notorious for suppressing academic freedom. In democratic states, the aggressive pressure toward the marketization of knowledge and academic life in the last decades has led to self-inflicted authoritarianism and, above all, to a sentiment of the irrelevance of academic freedom faced with the imperatives of the market, evaluators, rankings, referees, consultancies, and their terms of reference.

Dimensions of Decolonizing The processes of decolonization are complex.The following areas of decolonizing intervention can be identified: access to the university (for students) and access to a university career (for faculty); research and teaching contents; disciplines of knowledge, curricula, and syllabi; teaching/learning methods; institutional structure and university governance; and relations between the university and society at large. In my view, a successful decolonizing process must involve all these dimensions and all of them must be approached according to the following core ideas. 1. Decolonizing interventions must always be aware of the impact they may have on capitalist and patriarchal domination. Since the relations between the different modes of domination are not always straightforward, partial interventions, if not carefully measured, may well generate perverse results. For instance, some decolonizing intervention regarding history or philosophy may neglect the discrimination against women thereby contributing to reinforcing patriarchy.

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2. Decolonizing the university is a task to be conceived of in articulation with other processes of decolonizing social and cultural relations prevalent in society. I have in mind, for example, employment and consumption; employee recruitment for public administration; health policies; family and community relations; the media; secular public spaces; and churches. 3. Decolonizing interventions must not resort to the methods of colonialism, not even inverted colonialism. Mere inversion would make impossible the notion of the unequal co-creation of colonialism, that is to say, that not only the colonizer, but also the colonized must be the object of decolonization, though the methods used will be different in each case. This is also the reason why I maintain that the epistemologies of the South are not the inverse of the epistemologies of the North.3 A bad metaphor does not get better by being inverted. Moreover, the magnitude of the decolonizing tasks in question requires alliances among different social groups. It is more important to know on which side of the decolonizing struggle people are and what risks they are ready to run than to focus on their identity such as it presents itself naturalized by the dominant social relations. 4. Decolonizing interventions in the university always occur in the midst of some turbulence and conflict. On the one hand, they destabilize institutional inertias. On the other, they reflect long-term social conflicts occurring either covertly or overtly in other sectors of society. These conflicts, in some cases, may turn into university conflicts.4 It is not to be expected, therefore, that the argumentative serenity of Habermas’s (1984) communicative reason would prevail in such conditions. Actually, from the point of view of the epistemologies of the South, it will surely not prevail in any condition riddled with the contradictions dividing societies today. 5. The revision of history is central regarding any area of intervention. It is only possible to denaturalize the present and sustain non-conformity and indignation vis-à-vis current affairs if the past is viewed as the result of processes of struggle and historical contingencies. I begin precisely with history by resorting to an example that elucidates the topics of knowledge, methods of teaching/learning, and institutional creations.

Decolonizing History, an Illustration: The Case of Islam’s Participation in and the Making of the Western University To understand European universities in the medieval period, from the eleventh century onwards, the most relevant historical fact is the decisive Islamic influence, both as regards knowledge and teaching methods as well as the institutional forms that prevailed. Although they can be seen as an institutional novelty by reason of the autonomous juridical personality they adopted—a corporation—, universities were often preceded by colleges founded by benefactors, a phenomenon

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with deep roots in the Islamic world. In  a remarkable book on the birth of colleges both in the Islamic world and in the Western Christian world, George Makdisi shows to what extent Islamic colleges may have influenced the colleges that would appear in Europe a century or two later. According to Makdisi, The Islamic college, whether of the masjid or madrasa variety, was based on the Islamic waqf, or charitable trust… The term college, from the Latin term collegium, implies incorporation; the incorporated college does not come into being until more than half a century later (XIII century). Until then, the colleges were simple eleemosynary institutions, based on what has come to be known as the charitable trust. (1981: 226)5 But Islamic influence is even more determinative at the levels concerning ways of knowing and teaching methods. Regarding the latter, since the tenth century, the scholastic method has been considered a specificity of medieval Europe directly inspired by Greek philosophy, itself understood as exclusively European and thus stripped of its Egyptian and Persian roots. Actually, one of the basic features of the scholastic method, disputatio, that is to say, the dialectical confrontation of two opposite positions and the argumentation against and in favor of each one of them, whether reaching a synthesis or not, has clear roots in the teaching methods prevailing in Baghdad from the eleventh century onwards. The method known as Sic et non (the title of a famous work by Abelard), that is to say, yes and no, pros and cons, consecrated by Thomas Aquinas in his Summa theologica, was in vogue in eastern Islam a century earlier and precisely under the name of “antithesis of ijma ‘-khilaf, consensus-disagreement, sic et non.” Makdisi cites a telling passage by an author of this period: lbn ‘Aqil, who used the method of disputation in writing his Wadih fi usul al-fiqh, describes his method at the end of the monumental three-volume work […]: In writing this work I followed a method whereby first I presented in logical order the theses [madhhab, pl. madhahib], then the arguments [hujja, pl. hujaj], then the objections  [su’al, pl. as’ila], then the replies to the objections [ jawab, pl. ajwiba], then the pseudo-arguments (of the opponents for the counter theses)  [shubha, pl. shubah, shubuhat], then the replies [in rebuttal of these pseudo-arguments] [ jawab, pl. ajwiba]—[all of this] for the purpose of teaching beginners the method of disputation [tariqat an-nazar]. (1981: 117) As regards knowledge, both eastern and western Arabic Islamic influence in the production and transmission of knowledge in the European medieval age is well documented, not excluding Greek philosophy, later considered to be the

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direct antecedent of European philosophy, which by then had already seen the crucial Islamic intermediation erased. As far as western Islam is concerned, the strongest link in its intermediation was Toledo, conquered from the Arabs in 1085 by Alfonso VI of Léon. From then on, and especially when it was under the patronage of Bishop Raymond (1126–1153), Toledo was the center of translation from Arabic to Latin. Today, it is difficult to imagine the centrality then held by Arabic and Islamic culture, a fact that was actually bitterly resented by Christian authors. Makdisi quotes the Mozarab Alvaro de Cordova, who, in the tenth century, writes in his book Indiculo luminoso: My fellow-Christians delight in the poems and romances of the Arabs; they study the works of Muslim theologians and philosophers, not  in order to refute them, but to acquire a correct and elegant Arabic style. Where today can a layman be found who reads the Latin commentaries on Holy Scriptures? Who is there that studies the Gospels, the Prophets, the Apostles? Alas! The  young Christians who are most conspicuous for their talents have no knowledge of any literature or language save the Arabic; they read and study with avidity Arabian books; they amass whole libraries of them at a vast cost, and they everywhere sing the praises of Arabian lore. On the other hand, at the mention of Christian books they disdainfully protest that such works are unworthy of their notice. The  pity of it! Christians have forgotten their own tongue and scarce one in a thousand can be found able to compose in fair Latin a letter to a friend! But when it comes to writing Arabic, how many there are who can express themselves in that language with the greatest elegance, and even compose verses which surpass in formal correctness those of the Arabs themselves!. (1981: 240) The  surprise provoked today by these statements should be cause for reflection. They display an example among many others of the surprises with which decolonizing research and pedagogy may enrich and diversify the university and render it far more polyphonic.

Decolonizing Epistemology Decolonizing knowledge represents a gigantic task because it must take place on different levels and because the decolonizing processes must be different, not only according to the contexts in question, but also according to the kinds of knowledge to be decolonized. As regards the different levels, the epistemological, theoretical, analytical, and methodological levels must be distinguished. Here I focus mainly on the epistemological level. As to the contexts of decolonization, it is important to distinguish between contexts in which the cognitive processes resulted from the endogenous or organic needs of the

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societies in which they occurred, on the one hand, and contexts in which such processes were the epistemic dimension of political violence, invasion, plunder, and destruction, on the other. Regarding kinds of knowledge, multiple distinctions are in order as well. The most important one may well be the distinction between knowledges whose decolonization entails their elimination, and knowledges that may be refounded, reconfigured, and reconstructed in such a way that they may be put at the service of anticapitalist, anticolonial, and antipatriarchal struggles. In the latter case, then, we are talking of knowledges that may have counter-hegemonic uses, including ones that boost the processes of decolonization of other knowledges. Amílcar Cabral formulates this distinction better than anyone else. Far from rejecting the European, colonialist culture entirely, or as a question of principle, Cabral submits it to a hermeneutics of suspicion aimed at taking from it whatever might be useful to fight effectively against colonialism and go on to build a new society. In the Seminar of Members of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), in November 1969—one of the best manuals of popular insurgent education I know—Cabral has this to say about the struggle against colonial culture: We must work hard, comrades, to banish from our heads colonial culture. Whether we like it or not, in the city or in the jungle, colonialism stuck many things in our heads. Our work must be to get rid of what is rubbish and leave what is good. Because colonialism does not have only things that are no good. We must be capable of fighting colonial culture while keeping in our heads those aspects of human and scientific culture that the tugas [derogative name for the Portuguese colonialists] brought to our land and went into our heads as well. (1969: 2) If modern Western science has been a key instrument in expanding and consolidating modern domination, interrogating it from the perspective of the epistemologies of the South involves questioning both its colonial character (producing and hiding the abyssal line that creates zones of non-being) and its capitalist character (global commodification of life through the exploitation of two non-commodities, labor power and nature), as well as its patriarchal character (devaluation of the lives and social labor of women on the basis of their devalued social being). Therefore, decolonizing the social sciences makes little sense if it does not involve de-commodifying and depatriarchalizing as well. Focusing specifically on the colonial character of the social sciences may be justified, however, in order to highlight the false universality at the root of the multifaceted epistemicide6 committed by modern science. I have been arguing that the theories produced by Eurocentric social sciences are ethno-theories characterized by producing and reproducing abyssal lines between metropolitan sociability and colonial sociability, and by making

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them invisible at the same time (Santos 2014, 2018). What is the analytical value of such theories, and whom do they benefit? Specifically concerning the social sciences, the epistemologies of the South call for a theoretical and methodological work having both a negative and a positive dimension. The negative dimension consists of a deconstructive unveiling of the Eurocentric roots of the modern social sciences on the basis of which the sociology of absences can be conducted. The positive dimension is twofold: on the one hand, it implies the production of scientific knowledge ready to engage with other kinds of knowledge in the ecologies of knowledges required by the social struggles; on the other, it calls for the identification, reconstruction, and validation of the non-scientific, artisanal knowledges emerging from or utilized in the struggles against domination. Both positive tasks aim at building the ground for the sociology of emergences. Decolonial theories, for example, have been successful in accomplishing the negative, deconstructive work. Because it has been carried out inside Eurocentric epistemic communities and research institutions, this work has enjoyed some visibility. The epistemologies of the South are mainly concerned with the positive, constructive work that is much harder to carry out. To begin with, such work must be carried out both inside conventional research institutions and outside them, in the very social fields in which the resistance against capitalist, colonialist, and patriarchal domination is taking place. To the extent that it is carried out in conventional research institutions, it is bound to be looked upon with suspicion, considered a non-rigorous, politically motivated and therefore unreliable kind of research. At a time when the old common sense of research institutions, based on curiosity and disinterest, is being replaced by the new common sense of the relevance of knowledge measured by the latter’s market value (usefulness for solvent social demands), the positive tasks called for by the epistemologies of the South will be either fiercely resisted or utterly discarded as “not belonging.” Indeed, the post-abyssal researcher is at the antipodes of the consultant. The latter is someone whose knowledge has a specific utility with a price tag and for which there is a solvent demand. The post-abyssal researcher is someone for whose knowledge there is a huge and urgent, but non-marketable, demand; his or her knowledge is useful for social groups that either cannot imagine having to pay for it or, if they should, cannot afford it.7 As I have been arguing, the hegemony of the epistemologies of the North cannot be explained as a mere result of the triumph of one epistemological option among others. It is, rather, both the product and a crucial component of the global expansion of Western-centric capitalism and colonialism, as well as of patriarchy as reconfigured by capitalism. If so, is the hegemony of the epistemologies of the North linearly tied up with the fate of Western-led global capitalism? Is the visible erosion of such hegemony an irreversible historical process? Is it a symptom of inertia? Or rather of anticipation? Is it a cycle or a mere wave? What might be the epistemological impact of the dislocation of the dynamism

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of global capitalism to the East, as seems to be the case nowadays with the rise of Asia? Could modern science, the ultimate icon of the epistemologies of the North, consort with cultural imperatives that, perceived from the point of view of Eurocentric culture, cannot but be seen as unacceptable levels of instrumentalization and loss of rigor? Are, indeed, the new forms of instrumentalization all that different from the ones typical of the Eurocentric culture with which science has always cohabited? Is Freud’s unconscious, widely recognized today as a scientific breakthrough, less arbitrary than the divine inspiration to which Khaldun (1958), writing in the fourteenth century, ascribes the discovery of the new science in Muqaddimah? Just as the hegemony of the epistemologies of the North cannot be analyzed in isolation from global capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy, the epistemologies of the South must likewise be intimately linked to the social struggles against capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy, which for the last century have been gradually putting in question the cultural assumptions and the conceptual and theoretical patterns underlying the epistemologies of the North. Many of the cultural premises and political agendas emerging from such struggles in different regions of the world include ways of conceiving of the relations between society and nature, the individual and the community, and immanence and transcendence that are foreign to those held by the epistemologies of the North. The  historical process of epistemological decolonization, besides being a long-term process, is also unequal and asymmetrical regarding both fields of knowledge and world regions. The  work of epistemological decolonization implies distinct social and cultural processes in the regions that were the victims of historical colonialism, on the one hand, and in the regions that were responsible for colonization, on the other. In the regions subjected to European colonialism, the epistemologies of the North, as well as Eurocentric culture in general, started out by being an imposition that gradually, partially, and unevenly was endogenized by means of different forms of appropriation, selective and creative borrowing, hybridization, etc. Such processes permitted the counter-hegemonic use of Western-centric knowledges, as witness the contributions of modern science, Marxism, and Western philosophy to the national liberation movements of Africa and Asia, as well as, more recently, the use of alternative conceptions of democracy, human rights, and constitutionalism. The limitations of such counter-hegemonic applications (both state- and grassroots-centered) aimed at generating alternatives to capitalism, colonialism, or patriarchy are more evident today than ever before.8 The  results are not brilliant, to say the least, as global domination is today more aggressive than ever. Neoliberalism, the monocultural economic logic fueling the articulation between capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy, seems to no longer fear enemies, if for no other reason than because it is today capable of resorting to the monotony of war whenever the “monotony of economic relations,” as Marx puts it, does not suffice. The counter-hegemonic use of Western-centric ideas

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is delivering less and less promise and energy to social groups in their struggles against domination. This is, however, only one side of the story. As I mentioned above, in the past half-century, the geopolitical displacements regarding the dynamics of the social struggles against capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy have been increasingly corroding the hegemony of the epistemologies of the North. New or previously suppressed problematics have permeated political, scientific, and educational communities spirited by a variety of anti-Western, east-centric, south-centric, indigenous-centric repertoires of social and individual life, nature, spirituality, and good living. The innermost Geist of Western-centric power structures in our time is probably this strange combination of a sense of undisputed power and raw domination with a sense of the irreversible erosion of intellectual and moral authority and hegemony. In  Europe and North America (the latter, once cleared of indigenous people and their worldviews), the hegemony of the epistemologies of the North has deeper cultural roots. However, the struggles for the recognition of cultural diversity have been gradually destabilizing the epistemological and monocultural hegemony by introducing new problematics and new kinds of epistemological approaches. This process has been reinforced by the migratory fluxes that have immediately followed the independences and which are today the result of neoliberal economics, war, and climate change. The reaction has been swift. The censorial tools take many different forms: ranking educational institutions according to capitalist criteria of excellence; the positivistic and monocultural formatting of syllabi and scientific and professional careers; disciplining and silencing rebel scientists; books aimed at fostering awareness in the young banned for ideological reasons, whether religious or other; the control of scientific creativity by means of invoking strict criteria based on economic utility or academic performance (for instance, publications evaluated according to so-called “impact factors” rather than their innovative character). The subjective and objective difficulties regarding the process of decolonizing knowledge are, therefore, particularly relevant in the global North. The hegemony of the epistemologies of the North is here more deeply entrenched and the interests in preventing its erosion are more organized. Moreover, the global North is where there is a greater convergence between the epistemologies of the North and dominant Eurocentric culture and where wider social groups benefit directly or indirectly from capitalist, colonialist, and patriarchal domination. Accordingly, forgetfulness or the suppression of subaltern knowledges based on premises other than those underlying the epistemologies of the North are more radical. Last century, Carl Jung was, after Joseph Needham (1954), the European intellectual who best tried to understand Eastern thought and the one who best illustrates the difficulty in decolonizing Eurocentric thinking in the

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global North. This is how Jung expresses the difficulties he encountered in trying to fully understand the Chinese text entitled The Secret of the Golden Flower, which he and the sinologist Richard Wilhelm had published and commented upon. A long citation is in order: A thorough Westerner in feeling, I cannot but be profoundly impressed by the strangeness of this Chinese text. It is true that some knowledge of Eastern religions and philosophies helps my intellect and my intuition to understand these things up to a point, just as I can understand the paradoxes of primitive beliefs in terms of “ethnology” or “comparative religion.” This is of course the Western way of hiding one’s heart under the cloak of so-called scientific understanding. We do it partly because the misérable vanité des savants fears and rejects with horror any sign of living sympathy, and partly because sympathetic understanding might transform contact with an alien spirit into an experience that has to be taken seriously. ( Jung 1999: 82) The limits of a potentially decolonizing gesture are quite patent in Jung’s proposition. Confronted with what is at stake, Jung feels the need to revisit the specificity of Western culture before opening himself to diversity: It  is not  for us to imitate what is foreign to our organism or to play the missionary; our task is to build up our Western civilization, which sickens with a thousand ills. This has to be done on the spot, and by the European just as he is, with all his Western ordinariness, his marriage problems, his neuroses, his social and political delusions, and his whole philosophical disorientation. (1999: 83–84) Therefore, it is sad indeed when the European departs from his own nature and imitates the East or ‘affects’ it in any way. The  possibilities open to him would be so much greater if he would remain true to himself and evolve out of his own nature all that the East has brought forth in the course of the millennia. ( Jung 1999: 84) The  difficulties are such that they neither allow for direct access to nor  imitation of what is culturally strange. Jung’s explicitly Eurocentric proposal—unabashedly Eurocentric since it is quite sure of what it means to be “genuinely European”—is totally unaware of the arrogance involved in claiming European authenticity by turning other cultures into raw material. With the advent of colonialism, the loyalty of the West to itself was nothing more than its arrogance in creating victims cavalierly, hurting efficiently, and appropriating everything that is strange to itself, that is subject to its power, and that may be made use of. The other side of such an orgy of arrogance and

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power is the difficulty in acknowledging the other, in deeply listening to and learning with and from the other, in recognizing the unknown as a challenge even before knowing it, and in risking a certain defamiliarization with one’s own ways (one’s comfort zone) for the sake of a wider familiarity with the world’s diversity. Given the hegemony still enjoyed by the epistemologies of the North and the Eurocentric culture associated with them, the greatest challenge facing the epistemologies of the South is to render credible and urgent the need to recognize the epistemological diversity of the world in order to enlarge and deepen world experience and conversation. If it is clear that the north-centric/ Western-centric hegemony is wearing out, it is equally clear that this is taking place in a slow, non-linear manner. We are facing long-term historical processes. Moreover, there is the danger that the narcissism that characterizes the way the epistemologies of the North look down on other epistemologies end up being confronted by the inverted and rival narcissism of the epistemologies of the South. To break the vicious circle of such a dualism is at the core of the epistemological work involved in decolonizing the university. I would like to conceive of this epistemological task as corresponding to the task undertaken, at another level, by Fanon as he defines it at the beginning of Black Skin, White Masks: The white man is sealed in his whiteness. The black man in his blackness. We shall seek to ascertain the directions of this dual narcissism and the motivations that inspire it […]. Concern with the elimination of a vicious circle has been the only guideline for my efforts. (1967b: 11–12).

Contexts of Decolonization Since the South of the epistemologies of the South is epistemic rather than geographical, it is imperative to decolonize the teaching materials and methods in every society in which socioeconomic inequalities combine with racial, ethnocultural, and sexual inequalities. The neoliberal transnationalization of the university and the parallel conversion of higher education into a commodity are creating a highly segmented and unequal, global university system. Inequality and segmentation are clearly apparent not only if you compare universities in different countries, but also in the same country. To be sure, inequality and segmentation have always existed, but they are now  far more visible, more rigid, and better organized. In this section, I deal with the modes of articulation between capitalism and colonialism in today’s university system. As I have been insisting, university capitalism is the main driving force behind the global university system, but it always operates in articulation with university colonialism. However, the articulations between university

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capitalism and university colonialism vary according to regions of the world. Concerning the highest-ranking universities of the global North, university capitalism is a new development in a long historical continuity. Since these universities have always been closely associated with the formation of political and economic elites, university capitalism appears to be just an intensification of the aforesaid association. That is why they were so swiftly mobilized to be at the forefront of this new development. On the contrary, in the case of the lower-ranking universities, and particularly universities of the global South, the new university capitalism represents a significant break with the past and, as regards the future, almost a death foretold. Modern European university colonialism started at the beginning of European expansion in the fifteenth century and was first significantly established in the universities created in Spanish America from the mid-sixteenth century onwards. It went on assuming different forms in the following centuries. Being articulated with global capitalism under imperialism, it ended up being a presence even in societies that were not long subjected to historical European colonialism. In such societies, university colonialism took the form of Eurocentrism or Westerncentrism; in this case, its influence had more to do with teaching materials and methods rather than discrimination regarding student access or faculty recruitment. I am referring to societies where non-Eurocentric cultures are paramount, but where, nonetheless, the Eurocentric or Western-centric university dominates. The  dynamics between university capitalism and university colonialism gain in this case a very specific outlook. In eastern Asia, for example, the expansion of university capitalism may coexist with a deeper critique of university colonialism in the form of a critique of Eurocentrism. There are, among many other examples, interesting proposals to decolonize the university presented in Malaysia and Singapore (Alatas 2006; Alvares 2012). In the societies that were subjected to European colonialism, political independence changed the operative modes of university colonialism, although it survived, albeit under disguised or mitigated forms. In  such societies, the expansion of university capitalism tends to go along with increasing or more visible university colonialism. This  particular articulation renders university conflicts and student protests far more dramatic and capable of upsetting university inertias. The  epistemic South has been gradually emerging in European and North American universities. University conflicts, mainly student protests, have been occurring in different countries, with greater visibility in the USA, Canada, the UK, and the Netherlands. To what extent can one see these conflicts and protests as movements toward the decolonization of the university? The relations between university capitalism and university colonialism have varied over time. In the USA, the student struggles of the 1960s and 1970s had a strong decolonizing component, assuming two main forms. On the one hand, there was affirmative action aimed at fighting racial discrimination in university access; on the other, curriculum changes

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to offer areas of study reflecting the social and cultural interests of racialized minorities (indigenous peoples, afro-descendants, children of immigrants). Thirty or forty years later, many of the aforementioned new areas of study, as well as affirmative action itself, are being threatened for financial reasons (university capitalism) and by the return of epistemic and political conservatism, a threat that generally affects the social sciences and the humanities as a whole. Regarding this latest development, as the decolonizing practices of the previous period are eliminated or marginalized, a reinforced university capitalism carries with itself a reinforced university colonialism. Referring to the specific case of the humanities (which are part of the social sciences in its broadest sense), Maldonado-Torres maintains that, contrary to the desire of self-preservation, it seems to me that what the humanities can better do is to expand their analytical vision well beyond the opposition between liberal education as public good and neoliberalism, recognize the racial logic operating in the context of increasing apartheid, and take emancipatory and decolonial epistemological projects more seriously, even to the point of considering a transition from the emphasis on liberal arts training to the cultivation of emancipatory and decolonial acting and thinking. (2016b: 47) In  Africa, the contexts of decolonizing education in general, and university education in particular, vary widely, even if we restrict ourselves to subSaharan Africa. Many factors account for such diversity, from the differences among societies prior to European colonialism, to the different colonialisms and different processes and struggles of liberation from occupation colonialism. One factor is common virtually to all of them: the recent liberation from foreign-occupation colonialism and, in the case of South Africa, of the most explicit form of internal colonialism, the apartheid. This timeframe raises the crucial issue of continuities and discontinuities, and especially the issue of continuities reproducing themselves inside the processes of discontinuity. In light of this common factor, the most plausible hypothesis is that the processes of decolonizing the university cannot but be in their first stages. More than in any other region of the world, in Africa, it is imperative to bring into the picture the colonial education that existed 50 years ago. The most remarkable diagnosis was made by Julius Nyerere in 1967: It [colonial education] was not designed to prepare young people for the service of their own country; instead, it was motivated by a desire to inculcate the values of the colonial society and to train individuals for the service of their colonial state. In these countries, the state interest in education therefore stemmed from the need for local clerks and junior officials; on top of that, various groups were interested in spreading literacy and other education as part of their evangelical work.

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This statement of fact is not given as a criticism of the many individuals who worked hard, often under difficult conditions, in teaching and in organizing educational work. Nor does it imply that all the values these people transmitted in the schools were wrong or inappropriate. What it does mean, however, is that the educational system introduced into Tanzania by the colonialists was modeled on the British system, but with even heavier emphasis on subservient attitudes and on white-collar skills. Inevitably too, it was based on the assumptions of a colonialist and capitalist society. It  emphasized and encouraged their individualistic instincts of mankind, instead of his cooperative instincts. It  led to the possession of individual material wealth being the major criterion of social merit and worth. This means that colonial education induced attitudes of human inequality and in practice underpinned the domination of the weak by the strong, especially in the economic field. Colonial education in this country was therefore not transmitting the values and knowledge of Tanzanian society from one generation to the next; it was a deliberate attempt to change those values and to replace traditional knowledge by the knowledge from a different society. It was thus a part of a deliberate attempt to effect a revolution in the society to make it into a colonial society which accepted its status and which was an efficient adjunct to the governing power. (Nyerere 1967: 2–3) Given this most lucid diagnosis, any thinking, planning, or organizing for the decolonization of the university in sub-Saharan Africa today must confront two core questions. How much has the university changed since political independence? Considering that, in Nyerere’s own terms, the evaluation of colonial education “does not imply that all the values these people transmitted in the schools were wrong or inappropriate,” which were the right and appropriate values and which were the wrong and inappropriate ones? Twenty years later, and in spite of all the transformations the continent had undergone in the meantime, Ngugi wa Thiong’o interrogated the education in Africa with questions that echoed those asked by Nyerere: What should we do with the inherited colonial education system and the consciousness it necessarily inculcated in the African mind? What directions should an education system take in an Africa wishing to break with neo-colonialism? How does it want the ‘New Africans’ to view themselves and their universe and from what base, Afrocentric or Eurocentric? What then are the materials they should be exposed to, and in what order and perspective? Who should be interpreting that material to them, an African or non-African? If African, what kind of African? One who has internalized the colonial world outlook or one attempting to break free from the inherited slave consciousness?. (Thiong’o 1986: 101–102)

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Since 2015, South Africa became one of the most visible and most polarized contexts for decolonizing the university. Both the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall movements illustrate in dramatic ways how intimately university capitalism and university colonialism are today intertwined in the crisis of the university. In  the South African case, strengthening university capitalism gives so much more visibility to university colonialism that the latter becomes an autonomous cause for student struggles, which include both access and recruitment issues and curricula, syllabi, and teaching/learning methods issues. More than any other, the South African case shows that it is not possible to decolonize the university without demercantilizing it. Because of the close articulation between university capitalism and university colonialism, diagnoses stressing one or the other as the cause of university unrest are equally plausible. All agree, however, on the need to confront both of them, even though there may be divergences concerning the definition of the policies called for to face the crisis. In  a recent essay on the university in South Africa, Achille Mbembe underscores the centrality of university capitalism to the outbreak of the crisis and shows how the decolonization of the university must take into account the new global context of university capitalism and try to avoid “fighting a complexly mutating entity with concepts inherited from an entirely different age and epoch” (2016: 32). It is worthwhile to quote Mbembe at some length: We all seem to agree that there is something anachronistic, something entirely wrong with a number of institutions of higher learning in South Africa. There is something profoundly wrong when, for instance, syllabuses designed to meet the needs of colonialism and apartheid should continue well into the liberation era. There is something not only wrong, but profoundly demeaning, when we are asked to bow in deference before the statues of those who did not consider us as human and who deployed every single mean in their power to remind us of our supposed worthlessness. […]. So, today the consensus is that part of what is wrong with our institutions of higher learning is that they are “Westernized.” What does it mean “they are Westernized”? They are ‘Westernized’ in the sense that they are local instantiations of a dominant academic model based on a Eurocentric epistemic canon. A  Eurocentric canon is a canon that attributes truth only to the Western way of knowledge production. It is a canon that disregards other epistemic traditions. It is a canon that tries to portray colonialism as a normal form of social relations between human beings rather than a system of exploitation and oppression. (2016: 32) According to Mbembe, the process of decolonizing the university must avoid the risk of an identitarian temptation, that is to say, the risk of conceiving of decolonization as merely Africanization, and thereby failing to take into

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account the changes that took place in Africa during the last decades and/or the global context into which the continent is integrated nowadays. The said global context is particularly important in the case of South Africa, a country of intermediate development with resources to fight for a position of some prominence in the global university system. To support his argument, Mbembe reminds his readers that Frantz Fanon had already warned against the danger of identitarian reductionism: “because of his conviction that very often, especially when the ‘wrong’ social class is in charge, there is a shortcut from nationalism ‘to chauvinism, and finally to racism’” (2016: 34). According to Mbembe, decolonizing the university nowadays requires, on the one hand, a geographic imagination to conceive of the university beyond the limits of the state and, on the other, an epistemological imagination to open the university to the epistemological diversity of the world. Together, these two imaginative exercises will transform the university into a pluriversity. Mbembe concludes: To decolonize the university is therefore to reform it with the aim of creating a less provincial and more open critical cosmopolitan pluriversalism—a task that involves the radical refounding of our ways of thinking and a transcendence of our disciplinary divisions. (Mbembe 2016: 37) Nelson Maldonado-Torres gives particular attention to university colonialism in his analysis, though he is also aware of the new context of university capitalism in which the crisis takes place. He focuses on the rebellious students and the reactions their rebellion causes in society and the university, “particularly if the youth in question are part of social groups whose lands have been taken and whose forms of subjectivity are vilified” (2016a: 2). According to him, students’ actions that include calls for the creation of a Third World College in the late 1960s (USA), to more recent calls for a university of color (the Netherlands) and a “free and decolonized university” (South Africa), among many of such projects, represent the attempt to complete the process of formal desegregation of higher education and to participate in a project of social, economic, and cognitive decolonization. Liberal states should have predicted this: formal desegregation was only the first step in a process that would follow with continued demands for a concrete and real desegregation and for decolonization. Desegregation is simply incomplete without decolonization. It is equally predictable that the struggles for a “free and decolonized education” are bound to increase when segregation returns in the guise of fee increases that seek to socialize youth into a reality where the continued patterns of exclusion are justified with reference to the zero-sum game of state costs, a heightened individualism, and neoliberal criteria. That state

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leaders and leaders of liberal institutions are surprised by these developments simply shows how inadequate the dominant conceptions of social and political dynamics as well as of higher learning and the hegemonic criteria of excellence are. This inadequacy is what students around the globe are trying to address with analyses that take coloniality and decoloniality seriously. (Maldonado-Torres 2016a: 4–5) Both Mbembe and Maldonado-Torres find support in Fanon.9 Says Maldonado-Torres: The  movements for “free and decolonized education” are simultaneously addressing the coloniality of being, power, and knowledge. Many of their actions reflect the idea that just like the damnés cannot conform themselves with asking questions, the struggle for the decolonization of the university cannot be disconnected from the larger struggle to decolonize society. This means that the struggle to decolonize knowledge cannot be disconnected from the struggle to end the outsourcing of jobs, just like it cannot be disconnected from the struggle to change the ways in which land and resources are distributed. (Maldonado-Torres 2016a: 31) Mbembe’s and Maldonado-Torres’s stances exemplify two different ways of viewing the relation between university capitalism and university colonialism, and evidently imply different politics, including university policies. It  is important to acknowledge, however, that both scholars agree on the need to relate university capitalism to university colonialism, and that both highlight the idea that the university will be decolonized to the extent that it opens itself to epistemic diversity and cognitive justice. In spite of their differences, their conclusions coincide on the need to orient the decolonization of the university by means of ideas that actually preside over the epistemologies of the South.

Decolonizing the Curriculum: The Ecologies of Knowledges The possibility of the mutual enrichment of different knowledges and cultures is the raison d’être of the epistemologies of the South. The point is not to search for completeness or universality, but rather to strive for a higher consciousness of incompleteness and pluriversality. The aim is not to dilute time-spaces into some abstract, cosmopolitan non-identity, without space or time, and without history or memory. It is rather to render different ways of knowing more porous and more aware of differences through intercultural translation. In the process, new timespaces may be created that bring about subaltern, partial, emergent, and insurgent cosmopolitanisms emerging from cross-fertilization. Rather than an undifferentiated contemporaneity, it becomes possible to think of multiple forms of being

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contemporaneous. The  flatness or uni-layeredness of simultaneity may thus be articulated with thickness or the multi-layeredness of contemporaneity. What would a curriculum look like as defined along the lines proposed by the epistemologies of the South? The social, political, and cultural contexts of decolonization will determine the specificities of the curriculum. At the general level, only broad guidelines or orientations are in place. It would be oriented to identify the abyssal line drawn and then made invisible by the epistemologies of the North, the line that since the beginning of the modern period divides metropolitan ways of sociability, being, and knowing from colonial ways of sociability, being, and knowing.The abyssal line would be made visible, denounced, and superceded through the ecologies of knowledges, the co-presence of different knowledges, each one validated by its own criteria, brought together and jointly discussed in light of the pragmatic needs of social struggles aimed at post-capitalist, postcolonial, and post-patriarchal futures. No single body of knowledge, no matter how ample or sophisticated, can by itself guarantee the success of any relevant social struggle, given the complex interweaving of the different modes of domination, the different time-spaces in which they operate, and the different historiesmemories through which they frame individual and collective subjectivities. Building mutual intelligibility among different knowledges would be the central task of the learning process, and it would be carried out by resorting to procedures of intercultural translation. Two pedagogies would be pursued together, the pedagogy (of the sociology) of absences and the pedagogy (of the sociology) of emergences.The first one is geared to show the measure of epistemicide caused by northern epistemologies and their monopoly on valid and rigorous knowledge, and the waste of social experience thereby produced. The learning process would identify the absences in our societies (the ways of knowing and being that are considered irrelevant, residual, ignorant, backwards, lazy) and how such absences are actively produced.The pedagogy of emergences would be oriented to amplify the meaning of latent and potentially liberating sociabilities, the not-yets of hope, existing on the “other side” of the abyssal line, the colonial side, where absences are actively produced so that domination may go on undisturbed. Two final issues must be mentioned at this juncture: the issue of language and the issue of the ecologies of knowledges. In the case of the global South, decolonizing the curriculum calls for a new relationship between the national languages and the language introduced by colonialism (the extent to which it remains, after decades or centuries, a “colonial language” being a theme of debate). Among others, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o (1986: 4–33) has cautioned against monolingualism in Africa while emphasizing the importance of recognizing the epistemological, cultural, and political relevance of plurilingualism.10 As I have suggested, at the core of the epistemologies of the South is a pedagogy guided by the idea of ecologies of knowledges.11 The goal is, on the one hand, to explore alternative conceptions that are internal to scientific knowledge and have become visible through the pluralist epistemologies of science and, on the other,

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to advance the interdependence between scientific knowledges and other, nonscientific (vernacular, artisanal) knowledges born in struggle against domination. The ecologies of knowledges are the theoretical and methodological instrument that connects the goal of decolonizing the modern university to the larger movement toward global social justice. The overall premise underlying such movement is the idea that there is no global social justice without global cognitive justice.

Notes 1 I refer to colonialism in its broadest sense, as a social and economic structure, a culture, and a power form based on the abyssal inequality between human beings; in other words, inequality that presupposes the sub-human nature of one of the parties involved in the particular social relation. As I argue elsewhere (Santos 2018), colonialism did not end with the independence of the European colonies throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It continued under new forms. Colonialism and decolonization is thus a long, far from finished historical process. 2 The  types and contexts of authoritarianism vary widely. However, religious and political authoritarianism are increasingly operating together, probably one of the most telling symptoms that we may be entering a post-secular age. 3 See Santos (2014, 2018). 4 On the relation between social and student movements, on the one hand, and university reforms, on the other, see, for the case of Spain, the study by Buey (2009). 5 Alatas takes Makdisi even further and argues that the university as a degree-granting institution (and even the term baccalaureate) has its origin in Islamic educational institutions (2006: 112–132). 6 See Santos (2014: 188–211). 7 On the key concepts of the epistemologies of the South, see Santos (2018). 8 Early on, Fanon called our attention to such limits: “In  the colonies, the economic infrastructure is also a superstructure. The cause is effect:You are rich because you are white, you are white because you are rich. This is why a Marxist analysis should always be slightly stretched when it comes to addressing the colonial issue” (1967a: 39). 9 Whereas for Mbembe, Fanon is important because he managed to avoid, while living in a period of extreme colonial violence, the identitarian reductionism that could have made him lose sight of the big picture of capitalism and end up repeating racism ad infinitum, for Maldonado-Torres, Fanon’s relevance consists of his having defended a radical conception of decolonization on the basis of the experience of humiliation and destruction to which racialized bodies are subjected. 10 In Latin America, the Constitutions of Ecuador (2008) and of Bolivia (2009) conceive of the recognition of the indigenous languages as national languages as part of the process of decolonizing the state and society. 11 See Santos (2018).

References Alatas, Syed Farid (2006), “From Jãmi’ah to University”, Current Sociology, 54(1), 112–132. doi:10.1177/0011392106058837. Alvares, Claude (2012), “A  Critique of Eurocentric Social Science and the Question of Alternatives”, in Alvares, Claude, and Faruqi, Shad Saleem (eds.), Decolonizing the University: The  Emerging Quest for Non-Eurocentric Paradigms. Pulao Pinang: Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia, 135–161.

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Buey, Francisco Fernández (2009), Por una universidad democrática: Escritos sobre la universidad y los movimientos universitarios (1965–2009). Barcelona: El Viejo Topo. Cabral, Amílcar (1969), PAIGC—Análise dos tipos de resistência: 3—Resistência cultural CasaComum.org, 1969. Available at http://hdl.handle.net/11002/fms_dc_84161, accessed January 2018. Fanon, Frantz (1967a), Black Skin,White Masks. New York: Grove. Fanon, Frantz (1967b), The Wretched of the Earth. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Habermas, Jürgen (1984), The  Theory of Communicative Action,Vol. I: Reason and the Rationalization of Society (translated by T. McCarthy). Boston: Beacon. Jung, Carl G. (1999), “Commentary by C. G. Jung”, in Wilhelm, Richard, and Jung, Carl G. (eds.), The Secret of the Golden Flower:A Chinese Book of Life. London: Routledge, 67–137. Khaldun, Ibn (1958), The  Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History (translated by Franz Rosenthal), 3 vols. New York: Princeton. Makdisi, George (1981), The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Maldonado-Torres, Nelson (2016a), “Outline of Ten Theses on Coloniality and Decoloniality”, Foundation Franz Fanon, October 26. Available at http://frantzfanonfoundationfondationfrantzfanon.com/article2360.html, accessed January 2017. Maldonado-Torres, Nelson (2016b), “The  Crisis of the University in the Context of Neoapartheid: A  View from Ethnic Studies”, in Grosfoguel, Ramón, Hernández, Roberto, and Velásquez, Ernesto Rosen (eds.), Decolonizing the Westernized University: Interventions in Philosophy of Education from Within and Without. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 39–52. Mbembe, Achille (2016), “Decolonizing the University: New Directions”, Arts  & Humanities in Higher Education, 15(1), 29–45. doi:10.1177/1474022215618513. Needham, Joseph (1954), Science and Civilisation in China:Volume 1, Introductory Orientations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nyerere, Julius (1967), Education for Self-reliance. Dar es Salaam: Government Print. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2014), Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide. Abingdon: Routledge. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2017), Decolonising the University: The  Challenge of Deep Cognitive Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2018), The End of the Cognitive Empire: The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Thiong’o, Ngugi wa (1986), Decolonising the Mind:The Politics of Language in African Literature. London: James Currey.

CONCLUSION Toward a Post-Abyssal World Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Maria Paula Meneses

Under what conditions can the historical experience of the geographical South give rise to the epistemic South? What are the epistemological, ontological, and political consequences of this transformation? What does decolonizing knowledge involve? What are the contributions of the South to the knowledge of the world? The chapters in this book put forward a number of proposals, reflecting some of the debates about the emergence of a global South as an epistemological subject, other forms of being, and knowing. The epistemologies of the South involve a whole raft of diversified knowledges born of non-conformity, grounding the struggles against colonialism, patriarchy, and capitalism, guided by the idea that another world is possible. As Santos stresses, the main key premises that characterize the epistemologies of the South are: the diversity of the world is infinite, and no single general theory can account for it; alternatives are immense, and they are contextual; and what is indeed missing is an alternative thinking of alternatives; recognition and reinterpretation of the world is only possible within the context of struggles, and therefore it cannot be conducted as a separate task, disengaged from the struggles; since reinterpreting the world in order to transform it is a collective endeavor, there is no room for vanguard philosophers or intellectuals; instead, the epistemologies of the South call for rearguard intellectuals who contribute with their expertise to strengthen the social struggles against domination and oppression in which they are engaged; the alternative to a general theory consists in advancing ecologies of knowledges and in promoting intercultural and inter-political translation. In different ways, these premises underlie the essays that make up this volume. The  knowledge born in the struggle is the knowledge that simultaneously sustains the struggle against oppression, by providing it with intense and

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autochthonous meaning, and guaranteeing that it will not be easily abandoned. It involves a deep awareness of unjust suffering, of the arbitrariness of power, and of frustrated expectations. It  informs decisions on whether and how to resist in specific contexts, on directly confronting the oppressors or rather avoiding direct confrontation, on pondering on past situations and their evolution, and anticipating what may come to happen if specific actions are taken or fail to be taken. All this requires the application of complex, experience-based knowledges, intimately connected with the lifeworld of those for whom living entails being involved in struggles or running the risk of not surviving. These critical analyses, generated in specific struggles for the right to being and thinking otherwise, are examples of emergences that make it possible to imagine a post-abyssal world. The  chapters in this volume were written in languages that mirror their colonial heritage; however, they also show that it is possible to use these languages to weave counter-hegemonic contact networks among subjects whose experiences and resistances are so diverse. Writing them required from many of their authors that they practice intercultural and inter-political translation, using expressions and concepts which originate in the epistemic North, resignifying them and often occupying them from the perspective of their own practices. Santos describes how the epistemologies of the South aim to occupy the concept of epistemology in order to re-signify it and transform it into a tool capable of interrupting the domination policies legitimized by dominant knowledge: the epistemologies of the North. The global South is an imaginary of resistances and alternatives that call for recognition from other rationalities, meanings, and emotions. That is, an alternative thinking of alternatives. However, since the struggles against the triple capitalist, colonialist, and patriarchal oppression reflect the different contextual conditions within which they occur, none of them in itself symbolizes what knowing from the South is. Diversity without relativism is at the heart of the epistemologies of the South. Engaging in dialogue with the epistemologies of the North, also present in this volume, illustrates the fact that the epistemologies of the South do not aim to substitute themselves for the epistemologies of the North, with the South taking the place of the North. The South that is present in this volume is the South that rebels in order to overcome the existing normative dualism. What is at stake here is not eliminating differences, but rather eliminating the hierarchies of power that come with differences. Overall, the examples of social struggles examined in this volume show how the epistemologies of the South aim at a subaltern cosmopolitanism, produced from the grassroots up. Epistemological decolonization is a central theme in the epistemologies of the South. Since the colonial relationship affects both colonized and colonizers, understanding the possibilities of decolonization involves decolonizing both the colonizer’s knowledge and the knowledge of the colonized. The first part of this volume focuses on the possibilities and the challenges of mental

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decolonization. Self-determination processes, which seek to transform the subjects of the South into authors of their own historical narrative, presuppose the existence of a semantics of liberation that signals a break with the colonial proposal. Such narratives, many of which operate in the realm of orality, are suggestive of different temporalities, different affections and emotions, different community, and solidarity concepts and networks. They  bear witness to a dense pluriverse of encounters, confrontations, and cross-fertilization of knowledges, which confirms the presence of the ecologies of knowledges, where intercultural and inter-political translation unfolds in practice. The  texts included in the second part of this book show how the present times require a renewed militancy of struggle and resistance, a willingness to take risks so that cognitive justice may mirror and enhance the cognitive diversity of the world. Simultaneously, these chapters suggest procedures that advance inter-knowledge and promote inter-intelligibility. Aiming to strengthen emerging knowledges, these epistemological and ontological proposals from the global South seek to create the conditions in which oppressed social groups may represent the world in their own terms, so that they will be able to change it in their own terms and according to their own aspirations. The chapters that constitute the third part of this book focus on an important issue, which has not yet been extensively discussed: what is the role of the arts and the senses in the epistemologies of the South? The epistemologies of the North exclude the arts from the canon of rationalist knowledge as they are viewed as the realm of emotions, creativity, and subjectivity. With this separation between the humanities and the arts, on the one hand, and the “scientific” field on the other, innovation and creativity are relegated to a second, minor place. Poetry, the gift of words, both oral and written, as a form of political action ceases to be recognized as allowing for an epistemology, a different scale of contacts, of other ways of knowing and experiencing both the human and the non-human worlds. The decolonization of the gaze calls for an epistemic space that confronts colonialism and allows the use of the language of art to (re)construct subjects and their histories, subjects who speak of their struggles using the grammar of art. The epistemologies of the North have relegated senses like smell and taste to a secondary place in the relationship between the “I” and the world, for the reason that these senses question the universalist abstraction of science, which is based on the sight-hearing combination. As these essays demonstrate, food choices and food consumption are political acts. Tasting food is a form of direct contact with the outside world, a way of interpreting reality. Cooking itself, the act of sharing food, produces cultural hierarchies as well as exclusions that lead to situations of humiliation. In contexts where the triple violence of our time has been experienced, food, as a reflection of the power relations associated with knowledge production, structures and reinforces deep abyssal lines. The aggression that results from other people’s food choices is linked to the way

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how food habits define identities. Knowing the world from zones of contact generated in the preparation of food reveals how kitchens are social laboratories, where tastes and beings reconfigure themselves, creating the conditions for a post-abyssal world. Lastly, the forth part of the book focuses on processes of knowledge decolonization. With modern universities operating all over the world and sharing very similar curricula, it is important to discuss the possibilities of decolonizing knowledge, especially university knowledge. Criticism is made of modern university is carried out while the possibilities of refunding the university from a cognitive justice standpoint are investigated. In the last 500 years, the colonized world has not just been a source of raw materials for the industries of the metropolis, it has also been a source of raw materials for metropolitan sciences. Consequently, modern universities are part and parcel of the extractivism that characterizes the domination exerted by the global North. Decolonizing universities must begin with questioning not only the curricula of modern universities, but also the global economy of knowledge, founded on abyssal thinking and the exploitation of knowledges, which are extracted like raw materials. This  entire book calls for global cognitive justice—imagining previously unimaginable futures. Far from seeking to present the epistemologies of the South as a single theoretical corpus, the authors of these essays clearly insist that we need a theoretical alternative made up of different struggles, of different alternative cosmologies, some of which are emergent, while others carry a longer, albeit silenced, history. The common purpose of the authors represented in this volume is to de-marginalize the global South vis-à-vis “modern, Eurocentric” knowledge so as to ensure that there is no more room for socalled margins, thus guaranteeing that the knowledges produced by the global South become an integral part of a multifaceted world, with different knowledge production centers. Thinking about the experiences generated in the social struggles requires that one thinks from an epistemological, geographical, and political standpoint. In this sense, the South is quite diverse. Speaking from the South and with the South means producing knowledge with its subjects rather than about them, in a permanent dialogue mediated by intercultural and inter-political translation, as was mentioned above. It  means generating sound, relevant knowledge from other perspectives, differently formulated. This is a knowledge that requires new ethical relationships and is performative, healing, transformative; it goes beyond being decolonizing, democratizing, and depatriarchalizing, it is a knowledge that, by using different expressions, is capable of highlighting the emergences from the South, a knowledge attentive to both the individual and the collective needs of individual and collective oppressed subjectivities. Such knowledge must be unruly, disruptive, provocative, and rebellious. Based on different paradigms, worldviews, ontologies, and epistemologies, the dialogues between the authors of the essays that compose this volume

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reflect the attempts at developing debates aligned with the contexts that are pertinent to both the intellectual traditions and the theoretical, empirical, and cultural realities of the global South. Here, solidarity gains centrality because it enables the union of struggles through ethical responsibilities; the solidarity needed to break ideological structures, colonial, sexual, and racial hierarchies and the political discourses that legitimize such hierarchies. Projects aimed at decolonizing spaces, times, relationships, and knowledges generated by colonial relations are also based on transnational, transgenerational solidarity, sharing and learning from effective strategies committed to the dismantling of the power relationships in presence. A  number of chapters point out the importance of knowing the territory and taking care of it as a solidary gift for future generations. The embodiment of these connections, these struggles for the territory, for knowledge as a way of (re)existing, reveal a silent, daily process of decolonization that is committed to building a present and a future beyond the sovereignty inherited from the colonial project and beyond any imposed imagined geography. This political solidarity upsets, disrupts, and transforms hierarchical power relationships by creating and allowing space for insurgent forms of power among struggles, by producing shared analyses, archives of knowledge, and forms of resistance that support political projects committed to the decolonization of the global South from the global South. The  epistemologies of the South form a vast landscape of post-abyssal knowledges, methodologies, and pedagogies whose major aim is to substantiate the claim for a radical democratization of knowledge, a cognitive democracy without which social justice is impossible. The success of the struggles against capitalist, colonial, and patriarchal domination depends on our ability to produce post-abyssal knowledges that can return humanity to those who have been abyssally excluded from it by capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy.

INDEX

Note: Page numbers in italics refers to figures. Page numbers followed by n refers to notes. Aboud, Farik 64 Abrams, Meyer Howard 133–4 abyss 14, 84 abyssal: exclusion 172; fractures xxxv, xxxvii; line(s) xxiv, xxvi, xxix, xxxv, xxxixn20, 119–23, 130, 162, 167, 225, 237, 243; science 163; thinking, xix, xxiii, xxvii, 7, 14, 176 academy and law in South Africa 70–4 Acosta, Alberto 204, 206–7 aesthetics xxxv, 117–24, 172, 185; abyssal 120; of the South 120 Africa 46, 49, 64, 66, 74, 80, 124, 174, 204–5, 227, 232–3, 235, 237; sub-Saharan 71, 232–3; west 6, 9 Africana philosophy 79–80, 93n10, 94n13 African diaspora xxxiv, 79–80, 173 “Age of Revolutions” 5, 8–9, 17n6 Ahidjo, Ahmadou 65 Akbar 32 al-Afghani, Sayyid Jamal xxi; Refutation of the Materialists xxv Alam, Muzaffar 30 Alatas, Syed Farid 4, 11, 238n5 “ALICE: Strange Mirrors and Unsuspected Lessons” project xv, 131–3, 142–3, 176n1, 217n5 Allauddin 32

All India Civil Service 195–7 alternatives 118 Ambedkar, Babasaheb 148–9, 151 America xxxiv, 6, 48–9, 51, 73, 204, 209, 215, 228, 231 American Revolution 8, 11 Amin, Samir xxvii, xxxviii–xxxix Amin, Shahid xxxiii Amo, Anton Wilhelm 79 ancestrality 46–9 Andean world 99–100, 100 Anthropocene 49–52, 56n13 Appadurai, Arjun 22 Appiah, Kwame Anthony 90, 94n13 apxata 108, 112n20 arku 108, 112n19 Arnold, Denise Y. 106, 111n10, 111n11 aroma 162–3 art 120–4, 127, 134, 137, 143 artisanship of practices xxxviin2 Asia xvii, xxvii, xxx, 21, 23, 27, 165, 188, 204, 227, 231 Asif, Manan Ahmed 23 Auliya, Nizamuddin 30 autonomous traditions 4 Ashutosh Memorial Lecture: “Swaraj in Ideas” 183 Atlantic 164; civilization 7–8; north xxviii, 11

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Aymara culture 96–110 ayni 96, 104, 108, 112n18, 112n19 Azikiwe, Nnamdi 65 badjias 169–70, 175, 177n21 Bandung Conference xxvi, xxxviiin17 Banik Deo 32 Batra, Dinanath 192, 200n5 Bayly, Christopher A.: “birth of the modern world” 8–9, 11 Beck, Ulrich 3–4 beef eating 154–5 Bella, Ahmed Ben 65 Belley, Baptiste 8–9 belonging 23–5, 58, 99, 110n4, 124, 128, 147, 162, 164, 173, 226 Benda, Julien 186 Bengal Code 200n1 Berger, John: King 134 Berry, Thomas 49–50, 52–3; The Dream of the Earth 56n13 Bhakari 147–9 Bhambra, Gurminder K. xxxiii, 4 Bhargava, Rajeev 27 Bloch, Marc: Royal Touch 34 Boigny, Houphuet 65 Bokassa 65 bookless philosophy 64 borders 60–3 Boswell, Rosabelle 178n34 Botelho, Sebastião Xavier 164 boundaries 25 Bourguiba, Habib 64 Braudel, Fernand 6 BRICS xxviii, xxx, xxxixn23 Buen Vivir xxxiv, 50–1, 211 Burawoy, Michael 4 Butler, Samuel: Erewhon 128 Cabral, Amilcar xxi, 225 cantilever xxxv, 123 capitalist modernity xxiv, 41, 43 Carroll, Lewis 135, 143n14; Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 131–3, 140; Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There 131–3 Cartesianism 87–9; Cartesian worldview 205 Castanheda, Fernão Lopes de 164 Catholicism 71, 165, 168 center of the universe 61–2 Césaire, Aimé xxi, xxiii; Discourse on Colonialism 184–5

chacha-warmi 97, 106–8; construction of gender 100; dualism(s) 105–6, 108–10; four-dimensional rationale 101–5; gender 97–8; marriage 112n18; opposites that are inseparably linked 104; relationality in language 102; relationality in work 103; relations between men and women based on 97, 106–8 Chakrabarti, Arindam: Comparative Philosophy without Borders 193 Chakrabarty, Dipesh xxiv, 6, 188 chaorder 59–60, 64 Chatani 149 Chatterjee, Partha 22, 24, 28, 188 Chatterjee, Suniti Kumar 35 chewing gum 159, 160n19 Chishti, Muinuddin 29–30 Christianity 71–2, 74, 79, 215–16, 223–4 cinerarium 65, 69–70, 75 civilizational model 50–1 Code Noir 12–13 cognitive injustices xxxiii, 4 cognitive justice xx, xxxvi–xxxvii, 42, 118, 133, 163, 167, 173, 236, 238, 243–4 Cold War xxvi colonialism 15, 74, 81–3, 85, 88, 91, 118–19, 142, 164, 183–7, 190, 192–3, 204, 210, 212, 229, 238n1; epistemological 80, 83; historical 227, 231; modern, xxiii–xxiv, xxxviiin10; university 230–2, 234–6 coloniality of power 187, 205 colonial sociability 119, 121–4, 184, 225 colonization of mind 184–7, 189 Comaroff, Jean and John xxx–xxxi, xxxixn24; Theory from the South xxix comparison 61 complementarity principle 104 concept of science 58–9 connected sociologies 15 Connell, Raewyn xxx, xxxii, 4; Southern Theory xxix conquest xxiv, 6, 48, 69–71, 192, 204, 212–13; colonial 67, 166; of minds xxiv Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN) 203 consensus 26–9, 172, 223, 235 cooked food 146–7, 149–50, 152, 155–6 Copernicus 216, 217n9 corazonar xxi Cordova, Alvaro de: Indiculo luminoso 224 correspondence principle 103

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cosmopolitanism 90–1, 94n13, 94n15, 183, 236; subaltern xxxvii, 242 Crooke, William 33 Cugoano, Ottobah 79 cultural diversity xx, 14 Cunha, Tristao de Braganza: Denationalization of Goans 185 curry 166, 174–5; knowledges of 167–8 Cusa, Nicolas de 42 Cusicanqui, Silvia Rivera xxi, 209–11, 217n5, 217n6 cutlery 171, 177n29 dalits 148–9; aesthetic 154; cultural history 151; definition of taste 149–57; food pattern 152; globalization 156–9; middle class 155; vegetarianism 153 Declaration of Independence, American 5, 7 decolonization xxii, xxxvi–xxxvii, 83–4, 90; Connell on xxxii; contexts 230–6; of the curriculum 236–8; Dussel on xxxi; epistemic 6, 78–93, 209–12, 217n6, 224–30, 242–3; of the gaze 243; Gordon on xxxiv; history xxi, 222; of knowledge xxxv; of methodologies 59; of mind 187–94; of processes 221–2; struggles 89; of university 219–38 Dedalus, Stephen 140 democracy xxix, xxxi, 11, 27, 64, 73, 215, 227; challenges in India 33–5; cognitive 245 denizen 23 Derrida, Jacques 133 deSouza, Peter Ronald xxxv, 21 Dias, João Pedro Grabato (Frey Joannes Garabatus): As Quybyrykas 142 Dilthey, Wilhelm 81 Diop, Cheikh Anta xxi Dirlik, Arif xxxvi, 5 domination xvii, xxxv, xxxviin2, xxxviin4, xxxviiin10, 13–15, 46, 117–18, 129, 139, 163, 184, 190, 192–3, 197–8, 204–6, 233, 237–8, 241–2, 244; capitalist xxviii, xxxviiin7, 221, 226, 228, 245; colonial xxxviiin7, 207, 226, 228, 245; cultural xxiii; economic xxiii; Eurocentric xxxi, xxxvi, xxxviiin10, 118; European colonial 6; French 11;

global 227; imperialist 118; modern 119, 121, 124, 219, 225; patriarchal xxxviiin7, 221, 226, 228, 245; political xxiii, xxxviiin10 double consciousness 82, 90 Dred Scott v. Sandford 73 Drèze, Jean 198 Dubois, Laurent 9–10, 17n10 Du Bois, W.E.B. xxi, xxxiv, 81–2, 85, 90; Darkwater 80; The Souls of Black Folk 80; The Study of the Negro Problems 80 Dum Diversas 71 Dussel, Enrique xxx–xxxi; Filosofías del Sur (Philosophies of the South) xxix East India Company 24, 70 eclecticism 183, 188, 192–3 ecology(ies) of knowledges, xviii, xx, xxxi, xxxvii, 53, 118, 130–1, 136, 143, 163, 187–8, 226, 237–8, 241, 243 ecology of tastes 162–3 Eminem 139–40 enslavement of mind 183, 188, 190, 195 epistemicide xxiv, xxxviiin12, 58, 69, 119, 136, 214, 217n8, 225, 237 epistemologies of the North xiv–xv, xxiv, xxxviin3, 117, 119–21, 222, 226–8, 230, 237, 242–3 epistemologies of the South, xiv, xvii–xxii, xxxvi, xxxviin3, 7, 41–3, 49, 51, 53, 55n9, 129, 131, 143, 162–3, 171, 187, 193, 205, 222, 225–7, 230, 236–7, 241–5; aesthetics xxxv, 117–24; anticipation xxiii; goal xv; methodology xx, xxxi; poetry xxxv; principles 44; and women’s knowledge 162, 168–9, 172–4; Tamayo, xxxi Escobar, Arturo xxvii, xxxiii, xxxviiin14, xxxixn19, 55n11 essentialism 105, 109, 175 Estermann, José 101 Eurocentric modernity xxxi, xxxiii–xxxiv, 9, 16, 43, 122, 214; capitalist xxiv Europe xvii, xxv, 4, 6–9, 16, 49, 51, 71, 121, 124, 131–2, 174, 183–6, 188, 198, 204, 216, 223, 228 European Research Council 131, 176n1 experience lived xxxviiin7

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extractivism 42, 203–16, 244; cognitive 207, 209–11; Cusicanqui’s critique 209–12; economic 207; epistemic xxxvi, 207–11, 216; modern science 216; neo- 52; ontological 207, 209, 211–16; post- 50–1 Fals Borda, Orlando 55n2 Fanon, Frantz xxi, xxiii, xxxiv, 80, 85, 88, 91, 94n15, 217n3, 236, 238n8, 238n9; Black Skin, White Masks 82–4, 88–9, 93n5, 230; colonial sociability 119, 184; colonial violence in Algeria xxxviiin6; identitarian reductionism 235; “wretched of the earth” 217n4 feudalism 8, 150, 156–7, 159n4 Feyerabend, Paul K. 59 5th Pan-African Congress xxv Firmin, Anténor 93n11 First World xxvi, xxx Fischer, Sibylle 10–11 Fitzgerald, F. Scott 94n14; The Great Gatsby 90 food and knowledges 164, 174–6 Foucault, Michel 86, 93n11, 130, 186 French Revolution xxxviiin18, 7–10, 17n12, 148 Fukuyama, Francis 4 futurality 47, 55n8 Gamedze, Thuli 122 Gandhi, Mahatma xxv, 34–5, 154, 188 general aesthetics 119–20 genocide xxiv, 7, 74, 130, 136, 173, 215 Gilmartin, David 37n3 global cognitive justice xxxvi, 118, 238, 244 globalization xxii, xxviii, xxxi, 49, 120, 157–9 global social justice xxxvi, 118, 238 Gordon, Jane Anna 93n1 Gordon, Lewis R. xxxiv, 93n1, 93n9, 93n10, 93n12; Existentia Africana 87; Fanon and the Crisis of European Man 83; The Wretched of the Earth 93n7 Gowda, Chandan 200n2 Gramsci, Antonio xxxixn22 Great Transition Initiative 50 Grosfoguel, Ramón xxviii, xxxvi, 217n1, 217n3, 217n4 Guillen, Nicolás 139 Gupta, Maithali Sharon 25 Guru, Gopal xxxv, 188

Habermas, Jürgen 222 Habib, Mohammad 26, 28 Hahlo, H. R.: The South African Legal System and Its Background 70 Haiti, constitution 11; abyssal line 14; compensation 17n10; failed state 9; slavery 9–10, 12 Haitian Revolution xxxiii, 3–16; critique of “global sociology” 4–7; democratizing narratives 7–11; interconnected sociologies 15–16; omissions and hierarchies 11–15 Harishchandra, Bhartendu 25 Harris v. Minister of the Interior 72–3 Hayek, F. A. 154 Hegel, G. W. F. 63, 71, 93n11 hegemonic epistemologies 118 heterotopia 130, 134 Hindavi language 30, 32 Hindi language 36 Hinduism: political 22–3, 28; twice born 160n7 hindus and muslims in India 25–8, 30 hindutva 22 history of tastes 164–7 Hobbes, Thomas 93n11 Hobsbawm, E. J. 5, 8, 17n8, 17n12 Hofmeyr, Isabel xxx hooks, bell xxviii horizontal reasoning 60, 63 Hountondji, Paulin xxxvii Huizinga, Johan 59 human rights 64, 71–4, 146, 227 Husserl, Edmund 81 identitarian reductionism 235, 238n9 Idle No More 55n10 imperialism xxxviiin10, 118, 191, 213, 231 India xxv, xxx, xxxiii, xxxv–xxxvi, xxxixn23, 5–6, 121–33, 148, 151–6, 158, 163, 165–6, 169–70, 175, 177n24, 188–91, 193–200, 204, 209 Indian Constitution 22 Indian nationalism 21–2, 36 Indian Ocean 164–6, 174–5, 176n7, 176n8 Industrial Revolution xxx, 5–6 Ingold, Tim 45 intercultural translation xx, 42, 130–1, 136, 139, 174, 236–7 inter-political translation xv, xviii, xx, 241–4

250 Index

jajmani system 159n4 jaqi 101, 105, 107, 112n15, 112n17 jaqichasiña 107–8, 111n14, 112n17 Jaspers, Karl 81 Jewish dietary laws 159, 160n18 Jhootan 148, 150–1, 156–7 Joint Entrance Examination ( Jee) 194, 200n7 Joshi, Anandibai 160n10 Juárez Mamani, Juan 103, 111n8 Jung, Carl 228–9; The Secret of the Golden Flower 229 Kahn, Elison: The South African Legal System and Its Background 70 Kant, Immanuel 93n11 Kentucky Fried Chicken 156 Kenyatta, Jomo 65 Khaldun, Ibn: Muqaddimah 227 Khama, Seretse 65 Khusro, Amir 30–2 King, Martin Luther, Jr. 139, 141 kitchen as a laboratory for knowledge 163 knowledge(s) born in the struggle 241 knowledge decolonization 244 Lacerda, Gavicho de 165 languages 30–2; indigenous 238n10; relationality 102; vernacular 60–1 Latin America xxvii–xxviii, xxx, xxxix, 10, 42, 51, 203, 206, 210–11, 215, 217n6, 238n10 Lawrence, Bruce 37n3 leitmotif of exclusion 70–4, 93n11 Lenin, Vladimir I. xxi; Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism xxv Leong-Salobir, Cecilia Y. 172 Levi, Carlo: Cristo si è fermato a Eboli 121 Livros das Monções 165 Locke, John 67 Lorde, Audre: Sister Outsider 92 Machel, Samora 65 majoritarianism in India 22, 28–30, 34, 36 Makdisi, George 223–4, 238n5 Maldonado-Torres, Nelson 232, 235–6, 238n9 Manifesto on art and aesthetics xxxv, 117–24 Marginality 60–3

Mariátegui, José Carlos xxi; Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality xxv Marx, Karl 8, 63, 79, 192, 227 marxism 26, 93n11, 148, 210, 227, 238n8 Masud, Syed Salar 33 Matthews, Donald H. 80–1 Mbembe, Achille xxii–xxiii, xxix, 234–6, 238n9 McDonald’s 156–7 Melville, Herman: Billy Budd 131 Memmi, Albert xxi, 132; The Pillar of Salt 185–6 Meneses, Maria Paula xxxv, 21, 217n3 method(ology) 59–60, 80, 85–6, 89, 191, 195, 226, 230–1; of colonialism 82, 222; ecologies of knowledges 238; of the epistemologies of the South xx, xxxi, 59–60; international 194; learning/teaching 221, 223, 234; organic 159; paradoxical 83; scholastic 223; scientific 111 metropolitan sociability 119–23, 225 Michael, Cheryl-Ann 178n34 Mignolo, Walter xxxixn25, 6, 209–11, 217n6 Miyan, Ghazi 33–6 modernity xix, 5, 7–8, 11, 14–15, 49, 85, 98, 163, 205–6; Africa xxxi; capitalist 41, 49; construction 3; Eurocentric xxxi, xxxiii–xxxiv, 9, 16, 43, 122, 214; Eurocentric capitalist xxiv; history 6; transmodernity xxxi, 187; Western 139 Mohamed, Abu’Obayda 123 monocultures 41–2 moon treaty 66–7 More, Thomas: Utopia 126–8, 143n2 mother earth 64–5 Mugabe, Robert 65 Muslims 22–8, 30, 32, 37n3, 165, 216, 224; Hindu- 27 Mussolini 121 Naguib, Mohammed 63 Nash, Ogden 22 national unity 73 nation and nationalism xxxiii, 3, 21–2, 36, 84, 152–3, 192, 235 Native Land Act 71 natural phenomena 87, 89, 98 Needham, Joseph 228 Neto, Agostinho 65 Nicolas V 71

Index 251

Nkrumah, Kwame xxi, xxv, xxvii, 64 Non-Aligned Movement xv, xxvi North 50–1, 130, 164, 189, 193; aesthetics 120–1, 123; epistemic 242; global xiv, 41, 55n9, 120, 131, 191, 204, 209–10, 221, 228–9, 231, 244 Nussbaum, Martha 90, 94n13, 198 Nuttall, Sarah 178n34 Nyerere, Julius xxviii, 65, 232–3 Olson, Elizabeth 143n14 oneness of human beings 59, 66–7, 205 ontological dimensions xxx, 42–4 ontology xxi, xxix, xxxiv, 49–51, 53–4, 55n4, 81, 85–7, 89, 118–19, 124, 148, 162, 167, 171 oral archives 173 Orchestra of Indigenous Instruments and New Technologies 122 “ordinary” 90, 93n12 orientalism 5, 187–8 Ortega y Gasset, José: The Revolt of the Masses 84 Osterhammel, Jürgen 10–11, 17n10; Transformation of the World 8–9 other xxiii, xxxviiin9, 3, 11, 14, 97, 132; half 105; knowledges xiv, xxv, 41–3, 188, 225; side 237 otherness, stereotyping 32–3 other worlds 41–3, 47–9, 53, 79 Oyeˇwùmí, Oyèrónké: The Invention of Women 87–8 pachamama 49, 99, 104–5, 109–10, 110n6, 205 Paci, Adrian 121 Pakistan 22–3, 27 Palmer, R. R. 7–8 Pandey, Gyanendra 33, 36 Pawar, Shard 147 Pax Britannica 132 p’Bitek, Okot 121, 123 pecunimania 65 pedagogy of emergences 237 Peña Cabrera, Antonio 111n7 philosophical anthropology 80, 89–91, 93n11 Plath, Sylvia 139 plurality: of conceptions xxxvi; of knowledges xxxiv pluriverse xxxi, xxxiv, 42–4, 47, 49–50, 53, 61–2, 122, 243 poetry, utopia, and sociology 126–43

poiesophy 60 poison bread 148, 156–7 political Hinduism 22–3, 28 political ontology xviii, xxxiv, 42, 46–9, 51, 53 Popper, Karl 154 post-abyssal artists xxxv, 120–4 post-abyssal world xx, 241–5 postcolonial(ism) xxix, 6, 84–9, 91–3, 132, 143n12, 237 postcolonial Africana political thought 78–93 postcolonial phenomenology 85–91 problem people 80–2 promises of politicians 63–5 Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act 73 purity pollution 155 Quijano, Aníbal xxvii–xxviii, xxxixn21, 6, 210–11 Quintela, Paulo 141 Quispe, Choque 105 Rai Laddar 31–2 Ramalho, Maria Irene xxxv, 143n14 Ramamurthi, Bhaskar: Left out of the Rankings 194–5 Ramose, Mogobe xxxiv recipe(s) 148, 150–1, 159, 162, 166, 168–9, 174; as archives of knowledge 173 reciprocity principle 104, 212 recognition xxix, 79–80, 93n5, 241–2; centered 80; conflicts of past 33; conquest 35; of cultural diversity 228; dialectics of 82, 92; of difference 34–5, 42; equality 60–1, 73; force of 81; gendered presence 33–4; intellectual 210; limitations 93n1; multiple modernities 5; ontological xxx recolonization of mind 183–200 relationality principle 101 relational worlds 43–7, 49, 52 retail 23 rheomode 62 rights of nature xxxiv, 51 Rosanvallon, Pierre 13–15; The Society of Equals 11–12 Rossi, Alejandro Iglesias 122 Rudolph, Susanne 191 Rui, Manuel 137 ruins-seeds, xxi–xxii ruling the world 84–5

252

Index

runa 105, 107 Russian Revolution 148 Sá, Vitor Matos e 133 Said, Edward 185, 191–3 Sala-Molins, Louis 9–10 Salar Masaud Ghazi 29 Sankara, Thomas 65 Santos, Boaventura de Sousa xviii, 4, 6–7, 14, 16, 21, 55n1, 55n3, 55n4, 130–1, 133–4, 137, 139, 142, 143n12, 143n14, 163, 171–2, 176n1, 187, 199, 209, 217n3, 217n5, 217n8, 241–2; Alice books 131–2; A Discourse on the Sciences xxiii; Don’t Shoot the Utopist 128; Epistemologies of the South 41, 129, 143n9, 238n7; Escrita INKZ 134–5, 137; Manifesto for Good Living/Buen Vivir xviii Sartre, Jean-Paul 79; Critique of Dialectical Reason 93n11 SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) 194, 200n8 Sati 183–4, 200n1 Sauvy, Alfred xxvi, xxxviiin18 “Savage Identity” 150, 152–3 Schutz, Alfred 81 Second World xxvi Selassie, Haile 64 self-centered system xxvii, 87, 213 Seminar of members of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) 225 Sen, Amartya 26–7, 190, 198; “The Smallness Thrust Upon Us” 22 Senghor, Leopold xvi, 59, 65 sentipensar 42, 55n2 Shakespeare, William 143n2, 200n2; A Midsummer Night’s Dream 127; Romeo and Juliet 127; The Tempest 126–7 Shonibare, Yinka 124, 124n4 Shreekhand 150, 152–3 simillt’aña 106, 111n13 Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake 209–13, 215, 217n6 slavery 3, 6–8, 10–16, 45, 54, 73–4, 79, 81, 88, 91–2, 123, 146, 178n34, 186–7; abolition 9, 11, 17n8, 17n12; happy slave project 83; impact 178n34; mind 183, 188, 190, 195 Smith, Linda Tuhiwai xxiv social world responsibility 82–4

sociology of absences xxxi, 41, 43, 121–2, 130–1, 136, 226, 237 sociology of emergences 42, 44, 48–9, 122, 130–1, 136, 226, 237 South xxi, xxxixn22, 172–3, 210, 230; decolonization 245; epistemic xxviii, 231, 241; global xiv–xv, xxii, xxix–xxx, 41, 130–1, 176n3, 186, 191, 193, 195, 205–6, 209, 217n2, 220–1, 231, 237, 242–5 South Africa xxxiv, xxxixn23, 58, 60, 66, 69–74, 170, 195, 215, 232, 234–5 South Africa Constitution: Act 108 of 1996 72; Act 110 of 1983 72 South Commission xxviii Spivak, Gayatri xxxviiin13 Srinivas, M. N. 151 Stein, Gertrude 140 Stein, P. 70 stereotyping otherness 32–3 Stolcke, Verena 97–8, 110n4 Stoler, Ann Laura 176n2 Stovall, Tyler 12 Stratton, Jon: Alice’s Adventures 143n14; Through the Looking Glass 143n14 street wisdom of philosophy 58–75 subalternity 60–3 sub-humanity 118–19, 121 Sun Yat-sen xxi; Three Principles of the People xxv Tagore, Rabindranath 141, 143, 188–90 Taliaferro, Charles 143n14 Tamayo, Juan José xxx–xxxi; Teologías del Sur (Theologies of the South) xxix tastes, aromas, and knowledge 162–76; relationships 167–70; tasting contacts 173–6; territoriality 46–9 Thiong’o, Ngugi 233, 237; Decolonising the Mind 185 Third World xviii, xxii, xxiv, xxvii–xxviii, xxx, xxxviiin14, xxxixn25, 208, 235; political emancipation project xxiv–xxviii Transition Town Initiative 50 translation xxii, xxxviiin8, 60, 105, 175, 224; intercultural xx, 42, 130–1, 136, 139, 174, 236–7; inter-political xv, xviii, xx, 241–4 transmodernity xxxi, 187 Trouillot, Michel-Rolph 10–11

Index 253

Tsiranana, Philibert 65–6 twaheed 205 twice born 152–3, 160n7 ubuntu xxxiv, 49, 55n12, 58, 62, 65, 69–71, 73, 75, 205 United Nations 208; Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 110n1; world Commission on Environment and Development 207 United Progressive Alliance (UPA) 197, 201n11 United States Supreme Court 73 university: contexts 220–6; curriculum 236–8; decolonization 219–38; dimensions 221–2; epistemology 224–30; history 222–4; neo-liberal 197–9; public 195; Tagore view on 189–90 Untouchables 33–4, 151–2, 155–6, 158; see also dalits utopia xx, xxvi, xxxii, xxxv, 126–43, 173, 188; see also More, Thomas: Utopia; post-abyssal xxxvii Valdez, Yanett Medrano xxxiv Vergès, Françoise 175

vernacular language 60–1 Vieira, Fátima 129 Vishva Bharati 189–90 Von Trotha, Lothar 74 Wallerstein, Immanuel xxvii, xxxixn19, 130 Weber, Max 8, 81 Weber, Ralph: Comparative Philosophy without Borders 193 Wilhelm, Richard 229 world experienced through sensations 170–3 world rule 84–5 World Social Forum xv, xxxii, 41 World War II xxv–xxvi, xxxviiin16, 186 wretched of the earth xviii, xxxiv, 58, 60, 139, 206, 217n4 Yurumanguí river 44 Zapatistas, xxxii, xxxiv, 42, 47 Zelliot, Eleanor 160n5 Ziadah, Rafeef xxxii–xxxiii Zimmerman, Andrew 6